Episode 48: The Billable Hour, Driver’s Ed Ethics, and Making Therapy Unnecessary with Dr. Jon Bailey & Zachary Stevens

Filing an ethics complaint against us would require actually citing the ethics code—and honestly, we’d appreciate the peer review.

On this episode of Rad N Bad, Sean Yocum and Mike Carrero sit down with ethics heavy-hitters Dr. Jon Bailey (founder of the ABA Ethics Hotline) and Zachary Stevens (co-authors alongside Dr. Mary Burch of The Ethical Behavior Analyst) for an unfiltered examination of modern behavioral healthcare.

We move past checklist compliance and memorize-the-code ethics to ask the hard questions: What happens when ethical practice collides with corporate private equity and billable hour quotas? Why are we teaching supervisees like they’re taking driver’s ed instead of preparing them for the clinical highway? And why is the true goal of ABA not great therapy, but making therapy completely unnecessary?

Key Discussion Points:

• Driver’s Ed Ethics vs. Ethical Judgment: Why memorizing the BACB ethics code doesn’t prepare clinicians for real-world clinical pressure.

• The Conflict of Interest Trap: How tying compensation to billable quotas, 25-to-40-hour minimums, and "drive-by supervision" undermines client care.

• Outcome-Based vs. Dosage-Based Models: Why the field must shift from billing hours to measuring functional, real-world skill acquisition.

• The Supervision Reality: Moving beyond checking off 2,000 fieldwork hours to modeling how to handle denials, mistakes, and true client advocacy.

• The Mirror Moment: Why behavior analysts must embrace feedback, kick out private equity exploitation, and never lose sight of the human being across the table.

  
  

  You can pick up a copy of the Ethical Behavior Analyst right here! https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethical-Behavior-Analyst/Stevens-Bailey-Burch/p/book/9781032988849?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23976946742&gbraid=0AAAAACWuhHWAw1T6SJ5lQNVEYoky-9B4T&gclid=CjwKCAjwtKrUBhAhEiwAr77Zol_NkaYtUw4k7TMT4rxYZUP2YiRttF1P7SXqJ_LyNZ6yf2Y28qkO7BoCzsAQAvD_BwE