BCBA Personal Values as Your Career Compass

Most values talks in ABA point the compass at the client. This one flips it: your own values, as the BCBA, are the thing you steer with first. If you do not know what you stand for, you cannot tell when a company script is asking you to drift off course.

That reframe is the whole point of Megh Crowley's CEU. She is a BCBA who runs her own practice, and she keeps coming back to one image: the compass you carry into intake, into supervision, into the 6pm call with the family who is upset. Not the company's compass. Yours.

This page is for the BCBA reading at 9pm wondering if they are in the right job, on the right case, with the right supervisor. It is not about ACT values work with clients. It is about the clinician's own career orientation.

What a Values Compass Actually Is (and What It Is Not)#

Start with the plainest definition in the talk.

What are values, beliefs that act as guiding principles for your decisions, which I thought was just so perfect.From the talk — Megh Crowley

A values compass is not a poster on the wall. It is not a mission statement you wrote once in grad school. It is the short list of beliefs that decide what you do when nobody is watching and the protocol does not cover the situation in front of you.

A compass tells you which way is north. It does not tell you how many steps to take, which trail to pick, or what to do if a tree falls across the path. That is the part you still have to figure out as a clinician. The compass just keeps you pointed in the right direction while you figure it out.

For a BCBA, the situations that actually need a compass are the messy ones. The parent who wants extinction on a behavior you would not put on extinction. The supervisor who keeps pushing token boards on a learner who hates them. The intake packet that asks you to skip the question you most want to ask. None of these have a tidy procedural answer. All of them have a values answer.

The Four Principles on Page Four of the Ethics Code#

If you worry that talking about personal values sounds soft, the BACB already did the work of putting them in writing.

The BACB puts this out in the core principles on page four of the ethics code. Four foundational principles are compassion, dignity, respect, and behaving with integrity.From the talk — Megh Crowley

Compassion. Dignity. Respect. Integrity. Four words, page four. That is the floor, not the ceiling. If your daily practice does not show those four on the outside where the family and the RBT can see them, the ethics code says you have a problem, not a preference.

The useful move is to treat those four as the baseline of your personal compass and then add the values that are yours alone on top. Maybe yours include neurodiversity-affirming language. Maybe yours include never running a session you would not let your own kid sit in. Maybe yours include always paying autistic consultants. The page-four four are non-negotiable. The rest is the shape of the clinician you are choosing to be.

Why "Foundational Principles" Sounds Fluffy and Why It Is Not#

Megh names the discomfort straight out. In a field that loves checklists and graphs, values can feel like the soft part of the work. The part you talk about at conferences but quietly drop on Monday morning.

The reason it is not fluffy is that it actually decides outcomes. A BCBA whose compass is "the family stays in services" will write a different treatment plan than a BCBA whose compass is "the learner feels safe enough to sign off on what we do." Same data sheet. Same client. Different plan. Different career, eventually.

That is the part that matters for your career. Values are not background music. They are the thing that picks your cases, picks your fights, picks your employer, and picks who you become as a clinician five years from now. If you do not pick them, somebody else will pick them for you, and you will call that drift "burnout" later.

The Difference Between a Compass and a Checklist#

ABA loves checklists. We make them for fidelity, for treatment integrity, for parent training. They are useful. They are also not a compass.

A checklist answers "did I do the steps." A compass answers "are these the right steps for this person, right now, given who I am as a clinician." The checklist can be perfect while the direction is wrong. That is the failure mode this talk is really about.

Procedures change. Companies change. The research base changes. The compass is the thing that should be steady enough that when a procedure stops fitting, you notice. If your supervisor hands you a new protocol and your gut says no, the compass is what tells you whether that no is fear or whether that no is a real signal you should listen to.

I've used this as my compass in the clinical journey when I'm working with people. So foundational principles.From the talk — Megh Crowley

Notice the order in that line. Compass first. Then the work. Not the other way around.

How a Compass Helps When the Company Script Does Not Fit#

This is the part most BCBAs actually need on a Monday. You sit down for intake. The company packet says start here, ask this, check this box. The family in front of you is not the family the packet was written for. What do you do.

Megh's answer is to let the compass set the order, not the packet. If one of your values is meeting a person where they are, and the packet asks you to start somewhere else, you skip ahead, circle back, and trust that you can still get the company the data it needs by the end of the conversation. The packet is a list of inputs. The order is yours.

The same move works one layer up, at the job level. If your company's stance on stimming, on ascent withdrawal, on the social model of disability, on prompting, does not match your compass, that is not a small thing to file away. That is a heading reading. Either you change the company from the inside (Megh calls this being a change agent in your sphere of influence) or you eventually change companies. Both are real options. Pretending the mismatch does not exist is not.

The career version of the same question: are you working somewhere that lets your compass point true, or are you working somewhere that asks you to ignore it for the sake of the schedule. Most BCBAs already know the answer. The compass just makes them say it out loud.

One Question to Ask Before Every Clinical Decision This Week#

Here is the smallest possible version of this whole framework. Before you write the goal, run the session, send the email, or sign the plan, ask: which of my values is this serving.

If you cannot name one, that is data. Maybe the decision is fine and you are just running on autopilot. Maybe the decision is not fine and your gut already knows. Either way, the question forces the compass back into the loop.

Values should be woven into your practice. From the very first conversation that you're having with the family throughout the entire course of therapy, this should be kind of your guiding principle or your compass for all of your treatment.From the talk — Megh Crowley

Woven in, not bolted on at the end. That is the test. If you can lift your values off the plan without changing anything about the plan, they were decoration. If pulling them out would change the goals, the data you collect, and the way you talk to the family, they were doing real work.

You don't know where you're going to go if you don't know the direction that you're headed in.From the talk — Megh Crowley

That is the line to keep in your head this week. Pick one decision. Name the value behind it. Move on.

FAQ#

What is the difference between BCBA personal values and the BACB ethics code?

The ethics code is the floor. The four foundational principles on page four (compassion, dignity, respect, integrity) are the minimum every BCBA agrees to when they take the exam. Personal values are the layer on top: the specific stances you take that are not in the code but shape how you actually practice. Things like neurodiversity-affirming language, refusing certain prompt types, centering autistic voices, or paying autistic consultants. The code keeps you legal. Your personal values keep you you.

Can I have personal values that conflict with my employer in ABA?

Yes, and most BCBAs do at some point. The question is what to do with the conflict. Megh's frame is to start inside your sphere of influence: look at the language in your company's intake packets, training materials, and social posts, and see if you can move them toward your values from the inside. If the gap is too wide (your company runs from the medical model and you run from the social model, for example), the compass is telling you that you are in the wrong company, not that you should bend your values to fit.

How do I know if I have actually clarified my values as a BCBA?

A rough test: can you list three to five of them in under thirty seconds without thinking. Not corporate-sounding ones. Real ones, the kind you would say to a supervisee at your kitchen table. If you can, that is a start. The deeper test is whether your weekly schedule, your case notes, and your last three clinical decisions actually reflect those values. If a stranger read your last month of work, would they guess the same list you would say out loud. If yes, your compass is calibrated. If not, it is sitting in a drawer.

Watch the Talk#

Megh walks through the full compass framework, the page-four ethics code grounding, and the move from values into intake, assessment, and programming. If this page changed how you think about your own career direction, the talk is where the rest of the picture lives.