January-February 2007

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What Makes a Professional?

Professionalism in a peer-review profession means that

  • Each member of the profession agrees to meet the ethics of duty—the minimum standards of competence and ethical conduct set by peers within the profession and discipline and by the employing organization.
  • Each member of the profession should strive, over a career, to realize the ethics of aspiration—the ideals and core values of the profession, the discipline, and the employing organization, including internalizing the highest standards for professional skills. By accepting employment at a particular institution, a professor agrees to attend to the institution’s specific mission. In the event of conflicts among duties to the profession, the discipline, and the institution, those articulated by the institution are typically the only legally enforceable duties (most colleges and universities incorporate duties required by federal or state law into their institution’s rules). However, a professor should aspire to fulfill the highest ideals and core values of the profession, discipline, and institution, even if those ideals exceed legal considerations.
  • Each member of the profession agrees to act as a fiduciary (with the corresponding duty to avoid conflicts of interest) where his or her self-interest is outweighed by responsibilities to those served by the profession and its public purpose (the public purpose of the academic profession is the creation and dissemination of knowledge). Implicit in a professor’s fiduciary duty is a continuing reflective engagement, over a career, on how much private advantage in work is appropriate in light of the principles of professionalism. Excessive private advantage might encompass, for example, overemphasis on earning income through consulting, failure to work a professional work week, or unwillingness to undertake a fair share of governance duties.
  • Each member of the profession should, over a career, grow in personal conscience in carrying out the duties of the profession, including both the capacity for self-scrutiny and moral discourse with professional colleagues and the stakeholders of the profession.
  • Each professional individually and the faculty collectively as a peer group agree to hold colleagues accountable for meeting the minimum standards of the profession, the discipline, and the employing organization and to encourage others to realize the ideals and core values of all three. (This includes the public defense of academic freedom for members of the academic profession.)
  • Each professional agrees that public service in the area of the profession’s fiduciary responsibility is implicit in the profession’s social contract and that he or she should devote professional time to public service.