An informative article on “Professional Judgment” was published in the periodical Perspectives on the Professions in 1992. According to the article: “Professionals offer (and, we hope, deliver) honest and competent judgment. Perspectives has devoted many issues to the first of these, honesty, what we tend to call “professional ethics:” We have had little to say about the second, technical competence, what makes honest judgment professional. We have, it seems, simply taken it for granted. Yet, an engineer without engineering judgment, a lawyer without a lawyer's judgment, or any other professional without the particular form of judgment distinguishing his or her profession from all others, would be an incompetent “layman” who could not honestly practice the profession in question.”
“What is professional judgment? It is, of course, good
judgment-good enough at least to make us want it instead of lay judgment. But
what makes judgment good (in the way professional judgment is supposed to be)?
One witty answer is: Good judgment comes from experience; experience, from bad
judgment.” “The pieces that follow suggest that we may not yet have a
better answer. That, of course, is not all bad-if it leads us to think more
about professional judgment. While we cannot walk well if we think about
walking as we walk, we cannot learn to walk better if we do not think about
walking at all. If good judgment comes from bad judgment, only through
reflection can the transformation be accomplished.”
This article provides perspectives that address the
following four professions: (1) Judgment in Police Work; (2) Professional Judgment
in Engineering; (3) Balancing Risks and Benefits in Clinical Decision Making;
and (4) How Do Judges Think?
To learn more, read the article on “Professional
Judgement” by Michael Davis, Editor, Perspectives on the Professions, (Vol. 11, No.2, 1992). Perspectives is a periodical of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions
(CSEP), Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. CSEP was established in 1976
for the purpose of promoting education and scholarship relating to ethical and
policy issues of the professions.
