12.1 Management: the meta profession  (Page 3/4)

As I made my decision to move forward with this personal ordeal, I would learn from friends in the community that Dick was one of the most skilled surgeons in the country. That was reassuring. But I already knew he was a professional: a person wise and caring enough for me to trust my life to.

The paradox of the public pledge

A profession is literally so called a profession because the aspirant to the office is orally sworn to specific public commitments—he/she professes publicly legal and ethical obligations unique to the vocation of lawyer, physician, counselor or priest. The public pledge is the portal condition into the unique relationships afforded the vocation. Be clear, it is not primarily a privilege the professional assumes, rather it is fundamentally self-imposed burdens. No one is forced to swear they will put another’s interest above their own, yet this is the condition of all professionalism.

There is a tension between a profession’s public responsibility and its commitment (also made publicly) to the private, vulnerable client. Brandies includes both in the observation that, “A profession is an occupation which is pursued largely for others and not merely for oneself”. The paradox of “the other” is the paradox of the public pledge.

Quite a great deal is made of the special relationship between professionals their parishioners, patients, or clients—the sanctity of the confessional, the doctor patient relationship, or the lawyer client relationship—each special, private and protected both in law and ethics. Thinking of the confessional booth, the examination room, and the lawyer’s office the idea of a uniquely protected privacy, of almost a sacred space, emerges. Assuredly the priest, doctor and lawyer are sworn to hold sacred the disclosures within this zone of professionally protected communication. Being a professional means nothing less than willingly and publicly affirming that the client’s, patient’s or parishioner’s interest shall come before one’s own interests.

For many professionals the matter stops with the pledge: “I swear the patient’s interests comes first, end of discussion.” Yet this commitment to the vulnerable client is only half the issue, as the business and professional crises of our times illustrate. Not only is the priest sworn to care for particular souls, he is also sworn to see to the care of “the people of God”, the moral welfare of the parish, the salvation of the world. Not only is the doctor sworn to put the interest of the patient above his own, but the health of the patient’s family, neighborhood, and the public is also his professional obligation. The lawyer is not simply employed to represent the particular client, but also sworn to be an “officer of the court”. While accountants may be employed by Arthur Anderson to do the books for the Enron Corporation, they also are sworn to keep the interests of the public uncompromised (after all, we call the profession Certified Public Accountants).

I know of no professional comfortable with the tension inherent in this public pledge. No one likes hard choices; no one likes moral ambiguity; each of us wishes to live in a world where things can be reduced to some least common ethical denominator (for example, a single duty). When teaching business students, the mantra of Milton Friedman is the droning undertone of almost every class discussion: “the business of business is business”, the sole responsibility of the business executive is to increase shareholder return.