38.2 Your profession

The comment by Mark Stevens may be regarded as irrelevant and unfair by some professionals. They will argue that, in their firms, there has never been the slightest danger of misrepresentation, conflict of interest or sacrificing of clients’ interests and service quality to earnings and profits. Yet it is useful to keep constantly in mind the delicate balance between professional and commercial objectives in operating any professional firm and planning its future.

The current international climate in business and society is most favourable to those who provide businessand management-related professional services. As mentioned elsewhere, there are more and more issues in which industrial and service firms, governments and even social and voluntary not-for-profit organizations will need advice and help from independent professionals. The trend towards treating knowledge as a commodity and an object of business is fairly pronounced, although in some fields the limits to trading in knowledge and making profit from it have yet to be negotiated, fine-tuned and codified by legal texts and ethical rules.

However, the future will belong to true professionals, not to instant experts willing to promise and sell anything to uninformed clients without worrying about the outcome. Professional culture and responsibility are not dead concepts and if in some professional firms they have given way to the get-rich-quick culture, these firms would be well advised to reconsider their long-term