Introduction

Coaching can be considered as both simple and complex. Its simplicity is that it may involve just two people in a conversation about learning and change. However, a decade or more of coaching research suggests that coaching is also complex. It can embrace individuals, teams or groups, and can often involve conversations exploring goals as well as issues of identity, morality and personal dilemmas. It can be on achieving improvements in performance or on wellbeing and interpersonal relationships. In these complex conversations how do coaches make decisions when presented with issues that press against the boundaries of their experience, values, ethical codes and national law? How do supervisors help in this process? And what is the evidence that supervision, legislation, values or professional ethical codes can help coaches navigate their ways through these tricky cases.