Ethical Principles for MBTI® Practitioners

Ethical guidelines ensure that individuals receive accurate, clear, and non-judgmental information about the meaning of their MBTI results as well as practical suggestions for how to apply personality insights to improve their lives.

The following are the most important ethical principles for MBTI practitioners:

Clients must be informed of the purpose for taking the MBTI instrument, and they must take it voluntarily.
The MBTI instrument is intended to support individual self-understanding and growth and to enhance understanding of differences in others.
MBTI results should not be used to select or limit anyone on the basis of type.
Results of the MBTI instrument belong to the individual client. Results are confidential, and only individual clients can decide to share their results.
Every client completing the MBTI instrument should be provided an interactive overview of type theory and an explanation of the preferences before receiving results.
Type descriptions and definitions need to be given without bias or stereotyping, with the preferences and types presented as normal differences.
MBTI results must be verified by clients after they have learned about the preferences, received their results, and read type descriptions.
Clients may agree or disagree with their reported type, and clients are the final judge of which type fits for them.
Practitioners will respect copyright laws and any other laws of their country in using the MBTI materials.
Practitioners will use correct references to the MBTI instrument and type materials.

Source: MBTI Certification Program Participant’s Resource Guide (Mountain View, CA: CPP, Inc., 2011), 71-72.

For more detailed guidelines for how to ethically administer and interpret the MBTI instrument, please consult the MBTI^® Manual.