Clinical Supervision Guides›Free Supervision Toolkit›Supervision Questions
Last updated: November 4, 2026
Clinical supervision questions are the prompts a supervisor uses to help a supervisee look closely at their work: what happened in a session, what they think is going on with a client, what they felt and what they will do next. The 120 questions below are sorted by developmental stage, from the first session of supervision to the months before licensure, with separate lists for culture and context, law and ethics, and ending supervision. Copy them, print the PDF, or pick a few for your next session.
The question bank is part of the Sentio MFT program's free clinical supervision toolkit.
Starting supervision (any stage)
- What do you want to be able to do by the end of our supervision that you cannot do now?
- What has helped you most in past supervision, and what has not?
- How do you like to receive feedback, and what makes feedback hard to hear?
- Which clients or problems do you feel least prepared for?
- What would you want me to notice if you were struggling?
- Which models of therapy do you use, and which are you curious about?
- What parts of your identity and background shape how you work with clients?
- What are you required to tell clients about your status and your supervision, and how do you say it?
- How will you bring recordings, and what do your clients need to consent to?
- What would make supervision a waste of your time?
Early in training: building basic skills and confidence
- What happened in the session that you did not expect?
- What were you thinking about while the client was talking?
- Where in the recording did you feel most anxious, and what did you do next?
- What did the client want from the session, in their words?
- Which question in your intake felt hardest to ask?
- What is your provisional diagnosis, and what supports it?
- What would you need to know to be more confident in that diagnosis?
- What did you say after the client cried, and how did they respond?
- Can you reflect the feeling in that statement in one sentence?
- What is one thing you would say differently if you could replay this moment?
- How did you open the session, and how did you close it?
- What did you write in your progress note, and what did you leave out?
- Did the client say anything that could suggest risk to themselves or others?
- Which risk questions did you ask, and which did you skip?
- What would you do if this client called you in crisis tonight?
- Is there anything here that could be a mandated report?
- What is the client's treatment goal, and how will you both know it is met?
- What did you do between sessions to prepare for this client?
- Which skill do you want to practice today?
- Can we rehearse that response three times before you see the client again?
- What did you notice in your body during the session?
- When did you feel you had to fix the problem quickly?
- What do you think the client needs from you that they are not getting?
- What part of the case do you not want to show me?
- What do you know about this client's culture, and what are you assuming?
- Where did you feel out of your depth, and what would help?
- Which ethical question came up for you this week?
- What did you learn about yourself from this client?
- How are you looking after yourself with this caseload?
- What should we put on next week's agenda?
Developing: from technique to the client and the relationship
- What is your working hypothesis about what keeps this problem going?
- Which model explains this case best, and what does it leave out?
- How does your conceptualization change what you do next session?
- What pattern in the relationship between you and the client do you see in the recording?
- When did the client seem most engaged, and what were you doing?
- Where did the alliance slip, and how did you notice?
- How would you repair that rupture if it happened again?
- What are you avoiding with this client, and why?
- How do your reactions to this client compare with your reactions to others?
- What might be happening between us in supervision that mirrors what happens in therapy?
- What do the outcome measures say, and do you believe them?
- If this client is not improving, what are three possible reasons?
- What would you try if your current approach stopped working?
- What is the evidence for the intervention you chose?
- How did you adapt the intervention for this client's culture and context?
- Who else in the client's life is part of the problem or the solution?
- How would you bring a family member or partner into the work?
- In the couples session, whose experience did you track, and whose did you lose?
- What would you say to interrupt escalation in the first exchange?
- How are you balancing structure and following the client?
- What risk factors and protective factors do you see now, compared with intake?
- When would you consult another professional about this case?
- Is this case within your competence, and how do you know?
- What would you need to document if this case went to a licensing board?
- Where do you disagree with my feedback?
- What do you want me to stop doing in supervision?
- What feedback from a client surprised you this month?
- Which skill is improving, and what evidence do you have?
- Which skill have you stopped working on because it feels hard?
- What deliberate practice would help most before your next session with this client?
Approaching independence: judgment, integration and readiness for licensure
- How would you supervise yourself on this case?
- What decision did you make this week without checking with me, and how did you decide?
- When do you trust your judgment, and when do you check it?
- How has your theoretical orientation changed since you started?
- How do you integrate two models without losing coherence?
- What is your view of this case that I might not share?
- What would you tell a newer therapist about a client like this?
- Which kinds of clients do you work best with now, and why?
- What blind spots have you identified in your own work this year?
- How do your personal values show up in your clinical decisions?
- What does your outcome data say about your strengths and your gaps?
- Which clients have dropped out, and what do they have in common?
- How do you decide when therapy should end?
- How would you handle a complaint from a client?
- What would you do if you saw a colleague act unethically?
- How do you manage documentation when you are behind?
- What do you want your practice to look like in five years?
- What specialty training do you want next?
- How ready do you feel for the clinical exam, and what is left to prepare?
- Which law and ethics topics still feel uncertain?
- What will you need in consultation once you are licensed?
- How will you keep practicing skills deliberately after supervision ends?
- What would make you a good supervisor one day?
- What did this supervision relationship give you, and what did it lack?
- What should we focus on in our remaining time together?
Culture and context (any stage)
- How might the client's identities shape what they want from therapy?
- How might your identities shape how the client sees you?
- What assumptions did you make about this client that turned out to be wrong?
- How did you ask about the client's background, and how did they respond?
- What role do family, community or faith play in the client's life and problem?
- What would a culturally responsive version of this intervention look like?
- How do power and privilege show up between you and this client?
- How do they show up between you and me?
- What do you need to learn more about to work well with this client?
- When have cultural factors been missing from your case presentations?
Law and ethics (any stage)
- What did you tell this client about confidentiality and its limits?
- Is there anything in this case that could require a report?
- What consent do you have for this recording, and where is it kept?
- Is there a dual relationship risk here, now or later?
- What are the limits of your scope of practice in this case?
- What would you do if the client asked to contact you outside sessions?
- How do the telehealth rules apply to this client's location?
- What does your employer's policy say, and does it match the law?
- Which ethics code standard applies here, and what does it ask of you?
- What would you document about this decision, and why?
Ending supervision
- Which goals in our supervisory plan did you meet, and which are still open?
- What feedback from me was most useful, and what was least useful?
- What will you take into your next supervision relationship?
- Which clients need a plan for continuity when supervision changes?
- What do you want to tell me about our work that you have not said yet?
How Should You Use Supervision Questions?
Choose two or three questions for a session, not a list. Ask one before the recording, to set what the supervisee will watch for, and one after, to turn what they saw into something to practice. A question works best when it points at a specific moment: "Where in the recording did you feel most anxious?" gets an answer that "How did the session go?" does not.
The stages follow the Integrated Developmental Model. A supervisee early in training attends mainly to their own performance and depends on the supervisor for structure; a developing supervisee shifts attention to the client and moves between dependence and autonomy; a supervisee approaching independence balances the two (Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010). Development is uneven, so a supervisee can need early-stage questions about risk and developing-stage questions about conceptualization in the same week. Our guide to models of clinical supervision explains the model, and the supervision goals worksheet turns the answers into goals.
Can You Use These Questions in Group Supervision?
Yes. Use one question from the starting or culture lists as a check-in round, give each listener a question to hold during a case presentation, and close with a question about what each member will do differently. How to run group supervision covers the structure, and its group supervision activities pack offers twelve exercises built around the same moves.
Keep reading
Models of Clinical Supervision, the Integrated Developmental Model behind the stages
Case Presentation Template for Clinical Supervision, a twelve-part format to pair with these questions
Clinical Supervision Goals: Examples and a Worksheet, goals by stage for the supervisory plan
Your First Supervisee, what to cover in the first sessions
Frequently Asked Questions
What questions should a clinical supervisor ask?
Questions that point at a specific moment in the supervisee's work and match their stage: early on, what happened and what they felt; later, what they think is going on with the client and why; near licensure, how they make and check their own decisions.
What topics should be covered in clinical supervision?
Cases and recordings, assessment and risk, conceptualization and treatment planning, intervention skills, the supervisee's reactions, culture and context, law and ethics, documentation, the supervisee's goals and their development toward independent practice.
How many questions should I use in one supervision session?
Two or three. One before a recording sets what to watch for, one after turns what the supervisee saw into something to practice, and one at the close sets the next step.
What questions are good for a first supervision session?
Ask what the supervisee wants to be able to do by the end of supervision, what has helped in past supervision, how they like feedback, which clients they feel least prepared for and what supervision would need to offer to be worth their time.
References
Stoltenberg, C. D., & McNeill, B. W. (2010). IDM supervision: An integrative developmental model for supervising counselors and therapists (3rd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8058-5825-9. https://www.routledge.com/IDM-Supervision-An-Integrative-Developmental-Model-for-Supervising-Counselors-and-Therapists-Third-Edition/Stoltenberg-McNeill/p/book/9780805858242
American Psychological Association. (2025). Guidelines for clinical supervision in health service psychology. https://www.apa.org/about/policy/guidelines-supervision.pdf
Brand, J., Miller-Bottome, M., Vaz, A., & Rousmaniere, T. (2025). Deliberate practice supervision in action: The Sentio Supervision Model. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 81(6), 462-472. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23790
