Questions to Ask in Counselling Supervision
Questions for a counsellor or therapist bringing work to clinical supervision, covering how to open the hour, how to examine a piece of practice honestly, risk and responsibility, and what belongs in supervision rather than in your own therapy.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
Can I start with the client I have been avoiding thinking about?
The case you least want to raise is usually the one supervision is for. Naming the avoidance out loud at the start also stops the hour filling up with easier material, which is the most common way supervision quietly becomes useless.
- 2
How do you prefer supervision to be used: case by case, or by theme?
Supervisors work differently, and an unspoken mismatch here wastes months. Some want a caseload review, some want one piece of material in depth, and knowing which you are in front of changes how you prepare.
- 3
What model do you work from, and how does it sit alongside mine?
A supervisor from a different orientation can be useful, but you need to know when they are offering their frame rather than a general standard. Ask early so you can hear later comments as coming from somewhere specific.
- 4
How much of the hour can be about me rather than about clients?
Supervision covers the work and the worker, and the balance is negotiated rather than fixed. Getting an explicit answer prevents the awkwardness of raising your own state and not knowing whether you have stepped outside the contract.
- 5
I want to check whether what I did was inside my competence. Can we look at it?
Competence is easier to examine when you raise it than when someone else does. This framing invites a straight answer instead of reassurance, and reassurance is what most supervisees accidentally ask for.
- 6
Here is roughly what I said in the room. What would you have said?
Bringing your actual words rather than a summary gives the supervisor something real to work with. A supervisor who answers with their own sentence is teaching, while one who only asks how you felt about it may be avoiding the comparison.
- 7
What am I not asking about this client?
Blind spots do not announce themselves, so the question has to be put to someone outside the room. The answers usually point at an obvious area you have not touched: money, alcohol, a body, a sibling, a job that ended.
- 8
Why am I so tired after this particular person?
Fatigue attached to one client rather than to the whole caseload is data about the work, not just about your week. Supervision is where that gets examined rather than absorbed, and the answer often changes what happens in the next session.
- 9
Am I doing something for this client that they could do for themselves?
Over-functioning is comfortable and hard to see from inside. It shows up as chasing appointments, extending sessions, holding the plan, or worrying between sessions, and it usually reflects something the client is not carrying yet.
- 10
Is this a risk issue, and if it is, what would I need to do?
Bring it as an open question rather than a conclusion you have already reached. Supervisors will want the specifics you may have skipped: what was said, what has changed recently, means, previous attempts, and who else is involved.
- 11
What is my responsibility here, and what is not mine?
The distinction between what you are accountable for and what belongs to the client, the service, or the wider system is the one most often lost. Getting it stated plainly is what makes a difficult case bearable to keep working with.
- 12
What am I contracted to do here, and have we drifted from it?
Long pieces of work drift gradually into support, advice, or friendship without anyone noticing the change. Comparing the current sessions against the original agreement is a routine check that rarely gets done unless supervision does it.
- 13
Am I still the right person to be seeing this client?
Asking it is not the same as concluding it, and a supervisor can help separate discomfort from unsuitability. The useful follow-up is what would have to be true for the answer to change either way.
- 14
Would you have referred on by now, and to what?
Puts the question in concrete terms rather than abstract ones. If the answer is yes, you need to know to what, since a referral with nowhere to go is a different clinical decision from one with a service attached.
- 15
What is happening between the two of us right now that might also be happening in the therapy?
Supervision often reproduces the dynamic of the work, with the supervisee unusually defensive, vague, or eager to please about one particular case. Naming it in the room is uncomfortable and is frequently the most useful minute of the hour.
- 16
What do you notice me repeating across different clients?
Patterns are only visible from the outside and across cases, which is exactly the vantage point a supervisor has and you do not. Ask for it periodically rather than waiting for it to arrive in a review.
- 17
What am I good at that I do not seem to know I am good at?
Supervision skews toward difficulty, so strengths often go unnamed for years. Knowing what you reliably do well changes what you take on and how you present yourself, and it is information a supervisor already holds.
- 18
What belongs in my notes for this session, and what does not?
Record keeping standards vary by setting and by professional body, and most people learned theirs informally. Asking how a supervisor would write up the same session is a quick way to calibrate detail, language, and what to leave out.
- 19
If a complaint were made about this piece of work, what would you want to see in my file?
A calm way to test whether your documentation matches your practice. It usually surfaces the gaps: a rationale never written down, a risk discussion recorded in one line, consent that was verbal and never noted.
- 20
How would you tell me if you were worried about my practice?
Asking in advance makes it far more likely you would hear it, and it tells you how the supervisor thinks about their own responsibility. A supervisor who has never considered the question is one you may not hear from until something has gone wrong.
Using clinical supervision well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Contracting with a supervisor
Contracting with a supervisor
Agree the boundaries before the first case
Frequency, length, fees, cancellation, note keeping, confidentiality and its limits, and what happens if you disagree. Written supervision agreements are ordinary in most settings, and the conversation that produces one is more useful than the document.
Be clear about who holds clinical responsibility
This differs between managerial supervision inside an employer, consultative supervision you pay for privately, and training supervision attached to a course. Confusion about which one you are in is where most supervision problems begin.
Check the reporting lines
Ask what your supervisor would pass on, to whom, and in what circumstances, including reports to a training body or an employer. Knowing the answer lets you bring difficult material rather than manage your own file.
Ask about their experience with your client group
A skilled supervisor without experience of, for example, eating disorders, complex trauma, or interpreters in the room, can still supervise you, but you both need to know where the gap is and where else you will take that material.
Preparing for the hour
Preparing for the hour
- 1Choose before you arrive rather than deciding in the first five minutes, and say what you want from the time: a decision, a second opinion, or space to think.
- 2Bring the actual words where you can. A short verbatim section, or a recording where your service and consent allow it, changes the quality of the discussion.
- 3Note what you felt during the session as well as what happened. It is data, not an aside.
- 4Keep a running list between sessions of the moments you were unsure about, since those evaporate by the time supervision comes round.
- 5Review your caseload periodically rather than only bringing the loudest cases. The quiet, long-running ones are where drift happens.
When supervision is not working
When supervision is not working
- You leave reassured but no clearer about what to do differently next week.
- You find yourself editing what you bring, or presenting cases you have already resolved.
- Risk gets discussed in general terms and nothing is agreed or recorded.
- Your supervisor talks mostly about their own cases.
- You have never been told anything you did not want to hear.
- Raise it directly first, since a supervisor who can hear that feedback is usually worth keeping. If it does not shift, changing supervisor is a normal professional decision rather than a failure.