In the course of reviewing the various rules that govern the practice of land surveying in Texas, I found one that is a genuine puzzler. I have no idea why it was adopted dealing with referral fees:
§663.9. Professional Conduct.
(a) The surveyor shall not offer or promise to pay or deliver, directly or indirectly, any commission, political contribution, gift, favor, gratuity, or reward as an inducement to secure any specific surveying work or assignment; provided, however, this rule shall not prevent a professional surveyor from offering or accepting referral fees or from discounting fees for services performed, with full disclosure to all interested parties.
The most obvious problem that I see is that "full disclosure to all interested parties" is a virtually impossible condition if you properly consider all adjoining landowners, their lenders, and their title insurers to be "interested parties" in some kickback scheme that mainly acts to reward surveyors on some basis other than qualifications or quality of service.
Is payment of kickbacks (let's call a "referral fee" what it is) considered ethical for surveyors in any other state?
Not around here.
(m) A licensee shall not offer, directly or indirectly, to pay a
commission or other consideration or to make a political contribution
or other gift in order to secure work, except for payment made to an
employment agency for its services.
That is the full discussion for engineers, land surveyors, architects, landscape architects and geologists in Kansas.
I have some difficulty believing that the Texas BOR wanted to facilitate the activities of survey brokers as intermediaries in transactions for surveying services, but that's about the only motive that comes to mind.
Suppose a member of the public calls wanting to have a survey made and the practitioner can now ethically steer them to some other surveyor who has agreed to pay a "finder's fee" of 5% or whatever for the reference. What are the odds that Mr. - or Ms. let's not rule that one out - Referring Surveyor would be able to prove that Joe Client had been told that 5% of the money paid the other surveyor would end up in Referring Surveyor's wallet for steering the work to him or her.
The entire arrangement smells. I wonder who the real constituency for the rule is.
Similar wording is in the rules of every state I have reviewed. (As of now that is quite a few of them.)
Similar wording is also in the NCEES Model Code of Ethics.
My answer to the question posed in the subject line is ... No*.
(*The one exception is a fee paid to someone who is helping you find qualified employees.)
Larry P
And the obvious reason is that the ideal transaction by which a member of the public obtains a professional service is one in which the conditions favor a rational choice and a rational outcome. That is, the consumer of the service is able in advance to make an informed choice about the service and the terms under which it is to be provided and can expect to receive that service and its products as expected.
In the clause: "this rule shall not prevent a professional surveyor from offering or accepting referral fees or from discounting fees for services performed, with full disclosure to all interested parties", it would seem to me that "full disclosure to all interested parties" in advance of any contractual arrangements is an impossibility in just about any arrangement I can imagine.
If it's only after the fact, it is a moot point since the choice to contract with a professional has already been made and the information can't have contributed to an informed choice.
NB: The irony is that a Texas surveyor is expected, as a condition of renewing his or her license, to aver that he or she "will place the interest of the public above all others in [the] practice of Professional Land Surveying", which is at best paradoxical.
> NB: The irony is that a Texas surveyor is expected, as a condition of renewing his or her license, to aver that he or she "will place the interest of the public above all others in [the] practice of Professional Land Surveying", which is at best paradoxical.
This is not just Texas. We all are supposed to protect the public. The old "... interest of the public..." routine has a built in contradiction. Who exactly is "the public"? Is my client "the public"?
And who is to say what is best for the public?
Danger lies in those waters folks. Be careful before you wade in with an opinion. There are hidden gator holes, quick sand and dragons waiting for us all.
Larry P
> > NB: The irony is that a Texas surveyor is expected, as a condition of renewing his or her license, to aver that he or she "will place the interest of the public above all others in [the] practice of Professional Land Surveying", which is at best paradoxical.
>
> This is not just Texas. We all are supposed to protect the public. The old "... interest of the public..." routine has a built in contradiction. Who exactly is "the public"? Is my client "the public"?
>
> And who is to say what is best for the public?
I don't have any particular difficulty in knowing what is best for the public under the system of land ownership within which I practice.
It definitely is in the best interest of the public for there to be a group of objective experts who can serve the role that land surveyors do : some third-party experts who can interpret the writings that evidence the arrangements that consenting adults have made between themselves for the disposition of real property and who can identify the shapes and locations of lands described in the writings. It is in the public interest that the entirety of the land ownership system operate as efficiently as possible, which does not mean that all transactions within the system will be at the lowest cost.
So if it is in the interest of the public that land surveying exists as an organized activitiy, it is also in the interest of the public that the most competent individuals work as land surveyors. That last bit has implications for the fees that surveyors collect and the reciprocal nature of transactions for services. It is in the enlightened self interest of the public that land surveying be a reasonably well compensated activity or it will no longer serve a necessary function at any efficient level.
My view is that professional ethics can be described in economic terms since their object is to structure an efficient and sustainable marketplace.
Don't get me started...
I imagine it would depend on whether you're giving or receiving.....;-)
Interested parties are only those involved in the contractual relationship. That part after the semi-colon is to avoid violating antitrust laws more than likely.
There is a tension between contractual rights and consumer protection that will never be wholly solved.
> There is a tension between contractual rights and consumer protection that will never be wholly solved.
I suppose that you don't consider the nature of professional licensure to be a contract of sorts to the extent that the licensee agrees as a condition of obtaining and/or renewing a his/her license to perform various acts upon the premise that they are of general benefit to the public?
Sure, it's a social contract. And if the public decides they want that contract to eliminate the surveyors ability to engage in commerce, they can do so thru the democratic process. Simply write legislation that requires all surveying to be done by government employees. Lacking that, there has to be a balance between the social contract and business ones. This is true in all commerce, not just professions. Presumably the bars to entry into a profession require that those who practice have gained special knowledge and are of good moral character. If that is not the case in your area, I doubt micro management of practitioners will do much good.
