What ethical principles should practitioners follow?

Principles That Make Practice Legitimate

Action decides legitimacy. Practitioners must follow clear, enforceable ethical principles or they are simply technique without trust.

Do No Harm, But Define Harm Precisely

Every ethical system begins with a boundary, and for a practitioner boundary means measurable outcomes. Practitioners must identify direct harms, indirect harms, and systemic harms before taking action, and must document the expected and worst case scenarios in writing. Practitioners must refuse engagements where the probability of significant harm exceeds a client agreed threshold, and that refusal must be stated plainly and early.

What counts as harm in practice

Harm includes physical danger, legal exposure, financial ruin beyond reasonable risk, reputational damage that cannot be mitigated, and psychological manipulation. Practitioners must not be the proximate cause of irreversible decisions, like prompting violence or dissolving legal contracts, unless the client has explicit authority and informed legal counsel. Practitioners must maintain competence and decline when they lack the skill to assess risk accurately.

Translate Classical Frames Into Professional Standards

Use the classical tools as operational categories, not mystical rules. When using the 8 Doors, which are the actionable gateways in a Qi Men chart, state which Door is driving the recommended action and why it meets the ethical test. When you invoke the 9 Stars, which represent informational tones and likely outcomes, explain the evidence that maps the Star to an outcome. When you reference the 8 Gods, which are relational actors in the system, identify how client interests map to those roles.

When you display a reading of the Heaven panel and the Earth panel, which separate intention from context, annotate each axis so a non specialist can see the inputs and the interpretive steps. When you use the Three Wonders and the Six Instruments, which are the rules for synthesis and timing, record the calculation and the decision rule you used. Practitioners must be auditable, and these classical terms become the audit trail when translated into documented reasoning.

No secrecy, only necessary confidentiality

Confidentiality is not an excuse for opacity. Practitioners must protect client privacy while sharing methodology and limits. When confidentiality conflicts with preventing harm, the practitioner must prioritize stopping harm and follow local law and professional duty to warn.

Consent, Informed and Ongoing

Consent is not a single checkbox. Practitioners must secure informed consent that explains the method, the limits of accuracy, the possible outcomes, alternatives, and costs both financial and non financial. Practitioners must obtain explicit consent for any intervention that shifts decision responsibility to the practitioner, and must record that consent.

Practical consent checklist

• Describe the method and the role of interpretation, including which elements such as 8 Doors, 9 Stars, or 8 Gods will inform recommendations.
• State the confidence level for the principal recommendation and the estimated error bounds.
• Outline alternatives and the consequences of declining the service.
• Confirm client authority to act on decisions and any third party dependencies.

Accountability Structures That Work

Accountability starts with records. Practitioners must keep dated charts, notations of the analytic decisions tied to the Three Wonders and Six Instruments when used, and a short rationale for each recommendation. Practitioners must provide clients a written summary that they can use to evaluate outcomes later, and must offer a post outcome review to explain what occurred versus what was predicted.

Practitioners must submit to peer review or supervision, especially early in practice. Practitioners must participate in an external ethics pool or a register that can receive complaints and mediate disputes. Practitioners who refuse this oversight are choosing autonomy over trust, and must make that choice explicit to clients.

Transparency Without Recklessness

Transparency means explaining methods and limits, not exposing clients or teaching novices how to exploit sensitive situations. Practitioners must publish generalized case studies with identifying details removed and must explicitly note when methods were adapted or when a heuristic failed. Practitioners must avoid promise language, and they must refuse to sell certainty.

When secrecy is required

Secrecy is only justified to protect a client from harm or to preserve legitimately private information. Practitioners must not hide method to avoid scrutiny. Practitioners must log reasons and duration for any secrecy decision and revisit it at a defined interval.

Fee Structures That Remove Perverse Incentives

Fee arrangements shape behavior. Practitioners must avoid contingency models that reward fear, coercion, or escalating recommendations. Practitioners must prefer flat fees, capped retainers, or staged payments tied to documented deliverables. Practitioners who accept commissions that depend on third party actions must disclose those relationships up front.

Refuse Work That Crosses Ethical Lines

Not every question is fit for practice. Practitioners must refuse work that intends to deceive, to manipulate legally protected processes, to promote illegal acts, or to harm non consenting third parties. Practitioners must also refuse to cloak immoral influence with cultural language. Practitioners who accept such work are not offering a tradition, they are selling influence without principle.

Professional practice is judged by outcomes, not intentions. Keep records, avoid conflicts, and refuse engagements that break these rules.

Train Continuously and Test Your Tools

Ethics requires competence. Practitioners must train in related fields such as law, psychology, and risk assessment. Practitioners must test their use of the 8 Doors, 9 Stars, and 8 Gods against real outcomes, log the deviations, and adjust methods when patterns of bias appear. Practitioners must stop using any technique that shows systematic predictive failure without clear corrective steps.

Final Operational Rule

Every recommendation must be defensible in three ways, factual, legal, and moral, and you must be prepared to explain it to the person most harmed by it.

Keep this rule visible before you accept any client or any fee.