On Being a Professional

1
On Being a Professional

• Although there are many lists of criteria for
  what is and is not a profession, the following is
  widely accepted. A professional is one who

  Has extensive tertiary training and/or
education
  Practices an art that requires significant
intellectual development
  Provides an important service to the public
  Is certified or licensed by the state
  Has an organization that practices
self-regulation and controls entrance to the field
  Receives power from the state in return for a
commitment to the public good

• Belongs to an organization that has a code of
  ethics

2
On Being a Professional
Using this list as a guide, certain vocations are
clearly not professions. Barbers, for example,
provide a useful service to society and in some
jurisdictions licensed by the state, but they do
not have extensive training in a field that
requires significant intellectual development.
The fields that clearly meet these criteria are
medicine, law, theology, engineering, nursing,
accounting, pharmacy, and perhaps a few others.
Among those that do not, somewhat surprisingly,
is college teachingmost professors have no
training in how to teach.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of
profession that the state gives special power to
professionals, medicine, for example, physicians
are empowered perform certain actions (such as
surgery) that are not permitted to others.
Pharmacists, likewise, are permitted by the state
to dispense drugsan action that would land the
rest of us in jail if caught. Similarly,
engineers are licensed, exclusively, by the
state, to put their seal of approval on
engineering plans and specifications.
3
Limitations of Codes of Ethics

• Misnomer A Code of Ethics involves careful
  deliberation of the right and wrong thing to do
  in a given circumstance so cannot necessarily
  be reduced to a code.

Codes are lists of guidelines Guide to
respectable conduct
Admonitions and requirements e.g ASCE
Engineers should keep current .