Focusing on listening as a discursive practice, this article highlights some of the specific results gathered in a qualitative study, carried out with French speaking social workers in the province of Quebec. Redefining listening as a complex activity, layered on different levels, helps to uncover a practice often minimized in social work. Furthermore, the encounter with a speech qualified as delusional, underlines some of the stakes related to this minimization, amongst other things, the necessity of training in ethical reflexivity as a way of being rather than ways of doing.