Within the Social and Cultural Diversity core area, counselors are expected to demonstrate multicultural competence, which includes recognizing how culture, race, ethnicity, and worldview affect clients’ experiences and concerns, and actively exploring these with clients. Ethical and culturally responsive practice involves:

Openly inviting discussion of cultural beliefs, values, and experiences that may influence the client’s presenting concerns.

Avoiding assumptions or minimizing culture as “secondary” to treatment.

Option D reflects this standard: the counselor asks the client directly about any cultural issues or beliefs that may be impacting them, honoring client expertise about their own cultural context and integrating it into case conceptualization and treatment planning.

A places the responsibility fully on the client and can lead to important cultural issues being overlooked.

B contradicts multicultural counseling principles by treating culture as unimportant.

C suggests separating concerns from culture, which ignores the fact that many problems are embedded in cultural, racial, and systemic contexts.

Therefore, D is the strategy that aligns with CACREP’s multicultural and social justice competencies.