Practice question
Ethical and Professional Issues

Interpersonal skills for professional relationships: Scope of competence.

Original BCBA scenario practice question with answer explanation and wrong-choice notes.

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Question

Difficulty: medium. Skill: apply. Type: ethics professional judgment.

A BCBA notices a service decision may create an ethical risk involving job coach and interpersonal skills for professional relationships. Which action is best? The case file includes 6 recent sessions, 2 implementers, and 3 settings.

A
Continue unchanged and ignore the new contextual information
B
Pause, document the concern, and seek consultation, supervision, referral, or training before proceeding in relation to adult client's stopping work after corrective feedback

Correct answer

C
Add a punishment procedure before clarifying function, risk, or feasibility
D
Use the descriptive label as the explanation and treatment target

Explanation

Answer B

The clue is the combination of duration data showing long pauses after feedback, stopping work after corrective feedback, and the required task: Interpersonal skills for professional relationships. The case file includes 6 recent sessions, 2 implementers, and 3 settings. Pause, document the concern, and seek consultation, supervision, referral, or training before proceeding in relation to adult client's stopping work after corrective feedback is best because it answers that clue through scope of competence instead of treating the scenario as a generic behavior problem. On exam items like this, name the decision point first, then eliminate options that rely on one report, a label, a familiar protocol, or an action that skips the relevant data check.

Why this question is hard

Clue
Key scenario clue

The clue is the combination of duration data showing long pauses after feedback, stopping work after corrective feedback, and the required task: Interpersonal skills for professional relationships. The case file includes 6 recent sessions, 2 implementers, and 3 settings.

Trap
Common trap

Ignoring relevant data or context prevents a defensible behavior-analytic decision.

Next
If you missed it, review Scope of competence

Then answer a few related scenarios before moving back to broad practice.

Why the other choices are weaker

A
Choice A

Ignoring relevant data or context prevents a defensible behavior-analytic decision.

C
Choice C

A punishment-first response is weaker when less intrusive, function-based, or assessment steps have not been addressed.

D
Choice D

A label is not enough; the decision should be based on observable behavior and relevant variables.

Study tags

Scope of competenceInterpersonal skills for professional relationshipscompetencereferral

Turn this into a study plan

If this question felt difficult, practice a short drill from Ethical and Professional Issues and use the review page to turn missed items into a weak-area plan.

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Related study guides

GuideDistractor patternsUse this if the wrong answer sounded plausible.GuideMissed-question reviewUse this if you want to turn the miss into a study rule.GuideScore plateau guideUse this if similar mistakes keep repeating.

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Question FAQ

What BCBA domain does this question cover?

This practice question is tagged to Ethical and Professional Issues. It also includes study tags for Scope of competence, Interpersonal skills for professional relationships, competence, referral.

How should I review this practice question?

Answer the scenario before reading the explanation, compare your reasoning with the correct answer, then review why the distractors are weaker.

Is this an official BACB exam question?

No. This is an original study question for BCBA Scenario Tutor and is not an official BACB exam item.

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