Introduction:Professionalism Used to Mean Something

"Professionalism" used to mean something. A lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, or an accountant wasn’t just doing a job. They were members of a profession, bound by a code of ethics and a duty to something higher than their employer or even their client. Fidelity to that code gave them credibility beyond what skills alone could provide. Society expected that they would follow their professional ethics even at great personal cost¹.

The meaning changed as large organizations emerged in the twentieth century and began to employ members of the historical professions directly. GE was the first to describe these workers as “individual professional contributors”². As organizations hired other non-professional college educated workers into roles that were neither management nor labor, those workers sought the perceived respectability of the historical professions.“Professionalism” shifted from meaning the group ethos of a profession to describing its outward behaviors. Knowledge workers³ in organizations began adopting those behaviors: dress codes, professional associations, and habits of communication.

What had been a formal commitment, often marked by an oath or licensing process, became shorthand for polish and reliability. Today, professionalism means little more than "behaves well in a white-collar environment". The modern professional speaks politely, dresses appropriately, and follows through on commitments. These are all good things. But they’re not formal professionalism. They are virtues we value in every workplace, from the ER to the coffee shop.

Consider the differences between formal professionalism and the broader use, which I'll call operational professionalism.

Ethics andEnforcement: Whose Standards, and Who’s Watching?

Every job comes with a code of ethics⁴. At a minimum, it prohibits universally recognized bad behavior. Don’t lie, cheat, or steal. The ethics of operational professionalism tends to stop at a base level of expecting decency and integrity. The lines are black and white, and very little judgment is needed to understand whether an action aligns with the company’s code of conduct.

Ethical breaches are typically sanctioned privately. For minor violations, like an abuse of the vacation policy, the employee might only receive a warning. Major violations can lead to termination. If the company wants to keep the issue out of the public eye, the employee may be given the opportunity to resign quietly. For truly egregious errors, the company may refer the matter to law enforcement.

As an example, consider the situation at Wells Fargo in 2018.5,300 employees were fired (and some prosecuted) due to a scandal involving opening fake accounts for customers. This action was clearly against the bank’s code of conduct, but incentives and culture (and a lack of appropriate monitoring) made it an attractive option.

Like all employees, the formal professional has an expectation to meet baseline ethical standards, but the professional obligation goes further. It’s not enough to follow the rules set by society and employer. The professional must weigh competing obligations. There are courses of action that are legally permissible and beneficial for his employer or client that could simultaneously injure the reputation of the entire profession.

Consider this ethical quandary described by law professor Monroe Freedman. A lawyer has three ethical duties that can easily come into conflict.An attorney must find out all the relevant facts known by a client so that he can represent the client competently. He must not reveal the client’s secrets.And he must not knowingly allow his client to perjure himself. Freedman offers up an example where his client insists on taking the stand because a witness has offered mistaken testimony that implicates him in the crime. However, he intends to lie about his location at the time of the crime because another witness has offered true testimony that places him near the crime scene five minutes earlier. Many people would argue that the lawyer must reveal the perjury, butFreedman argues that the ethical course is to let the client testify and present his testimony to the jury just as if it were factual⁵.

When a doctor, lawyer, or engineer faces a difficult choice, the profession insists that they act in accordance with the ethics of the profession’s code, even if it puts them at odds with their client or their organization. The consequences for violating that code are often severe. Public censure, loss of license, or exposure to civil liability are the most frequent consequences. Ethics are enforced by licensing boards and the culture of the profession, even if their employer approved of or instigated the ethical violation.

Decision-Making:Judgment vs. Procedure

Ethics aren’t the only area where professional need greater skill in dealing with ambiguity than we expect from the ordinary workers. Professionals are expected to make decisions about a variety of complex and difficult matters that could affect the whole business. Other individual contributors make fewer decisions with clearer guidelines. They refer unexpected occurrences to managers, whose decision-making process and responsibility is similar to that expected from a professional.

Doctors, engineers, or lawyers don’t simply follow a checklist. They weigh competing interests, interpret unclear standards, and choose the best path even when guidance is limited. In fact, they can easily overdo this. In The Checklist Manifesto, Dr. Atul Gawande describes the difficulty he had in introducing checklists for operating room readiness to surgeons in his hospital, because they felt that their professionalism was being insulted!

In operational professionalism, decision-making is guided by organizational processes. Employees are expected to follow established procedures and, when faced with something unusual, to escalate the issue to a manager. The company expects employees to follow the playbook, not to solve problems independently. This approach supports consistency and efficiency, but it can also go too far. We’ve all had interactions with service workers who were absolutely inflexible in deviating from the standard procedure even when it obviously failed to address the situation. There are notable exceptions like the Ritz-Carlton, where every employee is empowered to spend up to $2,000 per occurrence to solve a problem for a guest or to create delight⁵.

Self-Presentation: What Are You ReallySignaling?

Every workplace, from hospitals and courtrooms to restaurants and retail stores, sets expectations for how people present themselves. These expectations go beyond dress codes and grooming standards. Employees’ appearance and behavior offer visible signs about their role, their values, and who both they and the company are.

In operational professionalism, self-presentation is about aligning with the brand and making customers feel comfortable. Employees wear uniforms, follow grooming standards, and use scripted greetings. The aim is consistency and predictability. A guest at Ritz-Carlton or Chick-fil-A knows what to expect from each interaction, not just from the product but from the people. Sometimes these requirements extend to the smallest details: how to greet a guest, which words to use when thanking a customer, even posture and body language.

In the formal professions, self-presentation historically conveyed credibility, authority, and discretion. While rarely spelled out explicitly in the profession’s code of conduct, many professions are so associated with a particular standard of appearance that you can guess the profession from a picture. A doctor wears a white coat. A lawyer wears a dark suit and conservative tie, and so on. The unofficial uniform of the profession signals trustworthiness and care. Over time, these norms have loosened in some fields.Today, an accountant might show up in jeans, or a top engineer might lead a project in a hoodie. Still, the underlying expectation remains: your appearance and demeanor say something about your standards, and about the standards of your profession.

What We’re Really Aiming for is Teamwork

Most of what passes for “professionalism” today —  showing up on time, communicating clearly, following through on commitments, respecting others, and owning your mistakes — isn’t unique to the professions. Those are the basic expectations for being a reliable member of any team, anywhere. Calling those actions professionalism devalues the important contributions that non-professionals make to our workplaces and society. Simultaneously, it lowers the societal expectations for the historical professions. We all benefit when we can trust that an accountant or a doctor is more than just an employee who will follow the boss’s orders. That’s something we should strive not to lose.

Notes

1.    This has probably always been an ideal rather than something that was fully realized. Jokes about dishonest lawyers and accountants go back thousands of years. The Greek dramatist Aeschylus referred to lawyers as “tongues for hire” in The Eumenides.

2.    Drucker, The Practice of Management, 330.

3.    I’ve written elsewhere about my distaste for this term that Drucker created, but it’s a widely recognized term that serves our purposes.

4.    Many workplaces undermine their ethics in practice, through what they sanction and what they reward, but I have yet to see a workplace that didn’t at least pay lip service to notions of acting with integrity, treating others respectfully, and so on.

5.    Freedman, Monroe H. “Perjury: The Lawyer’s Trilemma.” Litigation1, no. 1 (1975): 26–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29758181.

6.    https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2015/01/15/the-amazing-true-story-of-the-hotel-that-saved-thomas-the-tank-engine/

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