Demystifying Ethics
with Tyra Sellers
Behavior Bites Podcast - Ep66July 2, 2025Do you find the BACB ethics process a little mysterious?
Have you ever wondered how behavior analysts move forward after a violation?
During today’s meal— I speak with a behavior analyst, CEO, and all around amazing individual about her advice if you want to pursue a PhD, being “unprofessional”, the BACB ethics department, and the rivalry between Red Vines and Twizzlers.
*The Association of Professional Behavior Analysts (APBA) has not reviewed or approved the content of this podcast. The APBA does not endorse or sponsor this podcast and is not otherwise affiliated with this podcast.-
Amuse-Bouche
Why do you prefer not to be introduced as “Doctor”?
Why do you think Twizzlers should be uninvented?
Appetizer
How did you get into Behavior Analysis?
For behavior analysts thinking about pursuing a PHD, what would your advice be?
Palate Cleanser
Every APBA conference, the team releases a list of recommended restaurants. How is this scouted, and describe the best meal you’ve had during a conference?
Entree
As the former Director of Ethics at the Behavior Analyst Certification Board®, could you demystify how ethics violations work?
How do you think individual BCBAs can combat systemic issues like lack of support and being severely overworked (which lead to ethics violations)?
When a BCBA receives an ethics violation, do they need to report that to a professional association like APBA?
What would you tell a practitioner to help move forward after completing their (ethics) consequence?
Dessert
What’s an “insult” you’ve received that you’re proud of?
Excerpts from the Episode
(*Paraphrased highlights)-
Really get clear on the function of obtaining your PhD, because it can be expensive. There are programs and scholarships out there that help cover costs, but for many people, it's quite expensive. Even if you do get financial support, that's a period of time where you're not earning what you otherwise could be earning, and it may mean you have to live in a place that you don't necessarily want to be in for a few years. So it's a big commitment.
Get really clear on why. If you're doing it because you think it will help you in your career, I would recommend talking to folks in positions that you're interested in to identify whether or not a PhD is necessary. There are plenty of people in C-suite positions; chief clinical officers, chief operations officers, who have masters and don't have PhDs.
Now, if you want to be a professor, mostly you need it. Do you want to do research or not? That might help you determine which program you go to because most PhD programs are interested in turning out folks who are going to stay in academia and continue to do research.
Make choices about what kind of program you're going to go into and how that degree will serve you. It's a lot of time to put in, so you want to make sure you're developing the skills that you're going to use when you're done.
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I don't have an easy answer for that. Most of the time, when there is a violation of the standards in our ethics code, it is brought about by environmental variables, and we're susceptible to some of them. Having a violation doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't even make you an unethical person. It makes you someone who probably was doing the best you could in a given context, or you were unaware because you didn't have all of the information, or you were compelled to do something and you trusted that that other person had the information.
I think just turning the temperature down a little bit on ethics. Stop weaponizing it. Stop talking about ethics in this holier-than-thou kind of way. Stop trying to catch people in ethics violations.
We're all humans. We all screw up. We're all working freaking hard. We're all trying to figure stuff out that we didn't learn in grad school, or we learned the wrong way in our first job because we couldn't tell that it was a shitty company. Everybody just calm down and help each other out a little bit. Pay attention to the fact that if you’re stressed, if you're under time constraints, if you're under-resourced, if you're overworked, if people are siloing information, those are all risks at violating our ethics standard. You could be a great person, and you're still going to be at enhanced risk in those kinds of contexts.
Ethics isn't about good and bad at all. I think that's the main thing. I'm not going to fix the fact that we can't bill for a lot of the hours that are really important that we have to do, or that our caseloads are too big, or we're working under conditions where we can't show up as our authentic self and we don't even feel safe at work. What I can say is just fucking be kind to each other about this stuff.
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Reflect on your journey and be proud of yourself that you got through it.
Think about how you're going to use what you learned moving forward. Most people don't want to talk about the fact that they've been through a disciplinary determination. There's no reason that you would have to, but is there a way that you could anonymize some of the information and share it if you are going to take on trainees or if you have colleagues?
You can't change what happened to you, but you can directly decrease the likelihood that other people are going to find themselves in your situation, because you're training more robustly or you're talking to your colleagues.
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When people have called me unprofessional.
For me, the way the term professional or unprofessional is used is often very topographical. It's almost always used by people in majority power positions to indicate people that don't share the same stimulus properties that they value. It almost never had to do with anything that came out of my mouth.
I have had one or two people say when you swear that's unprofessional and I disagree. I think that's about audience control, and certainly sometimes I have not had good audience control. Like, I should have known better to not use that word in a room of fill-in-the-blank people who might find that a barrier to hearing my message. That I will accept.
For me, saying I was unprofessional had to do with the fact that I'm covered in visible tattoos, or the fact that for multiple years I had a shaved head, or the fact that I, especially early on in presenting, didn't present in the typical style of that era, or I didn't wear a navy blazer and a navy knee length skirt when I was presenting.
ABOUT Tyra
Tyra Sellers, JD, PhD, BCBA-D
Tyra Sellers is the CEO of the Association of Professional Behavior Analysts and owner of TP Sellers, LLC. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy and M.A. in Special Education from San Francisco State University, a J.D. from the University of San Francisco, a Ph.D. from Utah State University, and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst®.
Her professional and research interests focus on professional ethics, training and supervision, assessment and treatment of severe problem behavior, and variability. Dr. Sellers has over 30 years of clinical experience working with individuals with disabilities in a wide variety of settings.
She has held positions as an Assistant Professor at Utah State University and as the Director of Ethics at the Behavior Analyst Certification Board®. She has published several journal articles, four co-authored book chapters, co-authored books focused on supervision and mentorship and applied ethics for behavior analysis, and a workbook pair for consulting and new supervisors.
She's been a vegetarian for over 40 years, she loves flowers, she thinks Twizzlers should be uninvented, and she hopes you know how amazing you are!
CONNECT with Tyra
Instagram: @sellerstyra
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