View From the Bridge: What matters most 

During my days as a ferry captain, our crew amused ourselves with a little game. A full boat consisted of 24 vehicles and 150 passengers. We would occasionally calculate the dollar value of the load under our responsibility as U.S. Coast Guard-licensed deck officers.

Today, 24 high-end vehicles might be worth close to $2 million. A more current Value of a Statistical Life used by the federal Department of Transportation is $12.5 million. By that measure, the 150 souls aboard represent almost $2 billion. For a 10- or 15-minute crossing, licensed mariners could be responsible for about $2 billion in lives and property. Panamax and Ultra Large Container Vessels carry the same dollar value in cargo, although obviously not 150 people.

The point isn’t the arithmetic. It is the responsibility.

A ferry crew is most important when things go wrong and least appreciated when things go right. Wealth can buy another automobile or another way to get somewhere. It cannot buy a new course in the middle of zero visibility or instantly produce a replacement licensed crew. Mother Nature is completely indifferent to wealth aboard the vessel. Money has no influence over wind, tide, current, fog, or sea conditions.

That is what professional competency is about: being entrusted with responsibilities that cannot simply be bought away when circumstances turn bad.

The same principle applies to other licensed professions. The maritime industry has rightly faced criticism over its treatment of women and other shortcomings, and those deserve correction. But the fundamental responsibility of a licensed mariner is still the safety of life at sea and protection of the marine environment. Licensed professional engineers have a similarly defined obligation: protection of public health, safety, and welfare.

The licensing process for both professions exists because the public has a right to expect competence from those entrusted with such responsibilities. A license is more than a credential. It is an acknowledgment that an individual has met established standards and accepted corresponding professional obligations.

This is worth remembering when we hear the bluster in town government about “consultants.” There is often an implication that consultants are simply paid advocates who produce whatever conclusion their clients want. I find that accusation particularly interesting when it comes from professionals that the public itself regards with considerable skepticism.

Public trust varies among professions. Lawyers tend to occupy the “mixed trust” category, while financial and business professions rank near the bottom. That does not make every lawyer untrustworthy or every businessperson dishonest. But professions acquire reputations from the conduct of their members.

My own experience is instructive.

In a 20-year maritime career, I knew a few U.S. Coast Guard-licensed deck officers who were sanctioned for violations of their professional responsibilities. Some lost their licenses and careers; another received a one-year suspension. Among the many licensed mariners I have known, these few cases hardly seem sufficient to condemn the profession.

My more than 50 years as a professional engineer tells much the same story. I know of only one licensed engineer who received a one-year suspension for not honoring the duties of the profession.

My experience with the financial and business world is less forgiving. I have known three individuals arrested by the FBI for securities fraud, tax evasion, and outright theft. All were convicted or pleaded guilty, served prison time, and paid large fines. One was my college roommate who, years later as a financial-company vice president, stole millions. The other two were colleagues I considered friends. So much for my judgment of their character.

My skepticism began even earlier. My father was a founding partner in his Wall Street brokerage firm and a founding partner in a mutual fund set up not many years after the Investment Company Act of 1940. He would come home from the office, have a cocktail, and regale the family with stories of the day’s transactions and his constant tribulations with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He was never charged by the SEC. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, even my father had become troubled by what he saw happening around him. He recognized that the pursuit of financial success could erode the integrity upon which a profession depends.

That may be the larger lesson.

Competency is more than knowing how to do a job. Licensing can prove a threshold of knowledge and experience, but it cannot manufacture character. Professional ethics depend upon recognizing that the authority granted by a license carries a responsibility to someone other than oneself — or one’s client.

A mariner cannot negotiate with fog. An engineer cannot negotiate with gravity. Neither can make public safety subordinate to convenience, politics, or personal advantage simply because someone is paying the bill.

The ferry captain’s real value isn’t measured by the passengers’ net worth or the cars on the parking deck. It is measured by what happens when the weather turns bad and those aboard have no alternative but to trust the person on the bridge.

That is when professional competency stops being a credential and becomes a matter of consequence. And that is when the public’s trust matters most.