Some mediators resist validating a client's thinking for fear that it will be taken or understood as agreeing with him or her and is considered inconsistent with neutrality. There are many examples of mediator technique and strategy which are clearly useful, but are nonetheless construed by clients as contravening neutrality and therefore suspicious, if not unethical. Asking reflective questions that probe the efficacy of one or the other of the parties' negotiation perspective can be likewise difficult. In fact, the mediator may have a duty to question each party about their respective perspectives, raise concerns and anticipate unintended consequences implicit in a potential course of action in order to assure that the parties' understandings and agreements are informed and consensual. It is just these sorts of issues that constitute the bulk of grievances against mediators.
Neutrality has many and varied meanings, and therein lies the difficulty.
It refers both to the role of the mediator and how he or she will supposedly act. The ambiguity of the term is even more confusing for clients in conflict, many of whom come to mediation with the preconceived notion that a mediator is or should be just like a judge. No amount of explanation may be sufficient to dislodge their notions and clarify the ambiguity. In that sense it is culturally linked-we want to think that if the mediator is neutral and disengaged, he or she will be more objective, rational, dispassionate and unbiased. A car in neutral goes nowhere, the power of the engine is not transmitted to the gears.