Like professionals in other disciplines, music educators are expected to observe certain behavioral standards. In addition to teaching musical skills, concepts, and context, music educators are also expected to protect the welfare of children, serve as trustworthy stewards of public property, and generally behave responsibly and professionally within the context of the school and local community. Despite these expectations, many music educators have engaged in unprofessional, unethical, or illegal conduct. There are many reasons why human beings act unprofessionally or unethically. Regarding music educators, these reasons include the possibility that they are simply unprepared for the kinds of difficult situations encountered in their daily work. This may be due to inadequate preparation at the undergraduate or pre-service education level. Discussions of ethics within the context of pre-service teacher education programs are limited, and ethics education of any standardized or formalized nature is virtually nonexistent in music education. At both the pre-service stage and at the in-service level, the music education profession has yet to engage adequately in dialogue about issues of ethics and ethical decision-making. This study is an attempt to begin a dialogue in applied ethics in music education by collecting critical incidents of ethical problems that occurred within the context of music education practitioners' work. Discussion of these incidents may be useful in professional clinic sessions, teacher education programs, and as a basis for further research. This study is based on an extant study of ethical dilemmas encountered by members of the American Psychological Association (APA), in which the researchers sought to design a Professional Code of Ethics for the APA by collecting critical and categorizing incidents or ethical dilemmas that practitioners faced in their daily work as psychologists and counselors. (Contains 1 table.)