On Professionalism

I'm fortunate to work with a good group of people in a small engineering and surveying firm.?ÿ There's only one engineer who doesn't pull his weight and, wouldn't you know it, he's also the only one in the office who is always right, never makes a mistake, and is the poster child of professionalism (read that in the most sarcastic tone you can imagine).

Well, the other day he wandered into my office and began ranting and raving about the poor quality of another engineer's work.?ÿ He kept going on and on about how unprofessional the PE was and how no real engineer would design like that, etc..?ÿ I thought to myself that anyone who is quick to call someone unprofessional is almost certainly not a professional. Upon thinking this I realized I had a bit of a conundrum.?ÿ How can I claim that someone is acting unprofessionally when they question the professionalism of others without being a hypocrite or accepting that I myself am unprofessional because I just questioned someoneƒ??s professionalism?

I remember reading, I think it might have been Ayn Rand, that contradictions don't exist they're simply a warning sign to reevaluate your premise.?ÿ With this in mind I began thinking about the word "professional".?ÿ I use the term to describe someone who makes an effort to hold themselves to a higher standard than what is typically expected.?ÿ Professional can of course mean that one simply has a higher than average training in a particular field.?ÿ If using the latter definition, it would be difficult to call anyone who has passed the FS or PS unprofessional.?ÿ ?ÿSo it seems that one can technically be a professional while lacking professionalism (I can think of a few pro athletes that demonstrate this). ?ÿUpon settling on the former definition as aligning more closely with what most people are getting at when they question someoneƒ??s professionalism, my mind wandered back to Ancient Greece and Socrates's supposed conversation with a local priest, of sorts, named Euthyphro (reading the entire conversation is worth the effort it takes to download a PDF of Plato's Five Dialogues).?ÿ Socrates asks the man, who is prosecuting his own father for the impious act of murdering a murderer, what it means to be pious.?ÿ After a detailed back and forth, Socrates reasons that a religious man who is truly pious is not likely to be a man who believes he is pious. Alternatively, a man who believes that he is pious is almost certainly not.

I had a three hour drive to expand a bit more on this and I came to a greater understanding of what professionalism means to me.?ÿ Until this reflection, I was unaware that I almost never call myself a Professional Land Surveyor when it comes up in face to face conversation.?ÿ I usually say Land Surveyor or Licensed Land Surveyor.?ÿ I'll continue to do this in most situations.?ÿ I'm going to avoid calling into question the professionalism of others because to do so diminishes me more than them.?ÿ I'm going to remind myself often that if I feel like I'm a professional, chances are good that I am not.?ÿ If I feel like I know it all, I'm just underrating my deficiencies.