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The Role of Professional Experts in Modern Society

1. Introduction to Professional Experts

Professional experts played a major role in most societies of the past. State bureaucracy, high-level management in religion, and skilled practitioners of a variety of vital services were typical examples. Most people in such societies did what was required by their professional status or occupation, with only a handful of able individuals required to assume broader responsibilities. Whereas accepted religious leaders nowadays run only a few members of particular denominations, their counterparts in ancient times, especially in theocratic states, ruled entire peoples and controlled a major segment of social and economic life. The most powerful bureaucracies in history acquired an empire.

Modern society, however, has a relatively new class of powerful professionals, also a class that changes more rapidly than those before it. Relatively recent examples of professional experts who control the fate of nations include economists, financial experts, and business leaders. In fact, for better or for worse, Western countries are currently undergoing a revolution where experts born and trained in their respective fields play a pivotal role. These experts determine the course their nations follow. Their decisions influence the lives of their particular country’s citizens and often have an even greater impact on the citizens of other countries, especially those within the “Western sphere of influence.”

2. The Importance of Professional Expertise in Various Fields

We live in an age of rapid and constant change, in part brought about by scientific and technical advancement. That high-tech advancements will continue to be part of the landscape is an easy prediction to make. The aftermath of such rapid change brings many problems with people who have lost their jobs or job security, and also pressures for money and social status among those who are career bound. This places an increasingly strong emphasis on education in our present society.

It is a mystifying and depressing situation to observe educators who seem to be paralyzed in helping students in the difficult task of choosing a career. Pressure to “fill the seats” outweigh any philosophy or guiding principles of career preparation, resulting in the fact that 40 percent of those entering college do not complete their studies. These content motivated students, mainly educated in highly technical fields, consider their work as part of the never-ending struggle to push back the frontiers of knowledge. They see their work as worth doing because of the future gains they will make possible by their sacrifice of time and effort.

Description of the world of 1984 primarily to elucidate the motivations of professional scientists and engineers. This world view seems the most important of all, feeling as we do that their abilities will be the major unknown shaping the world of 1984. Without this view, the professional scientist and engineer is a fish out of water floundering in a welter of ill-digested and superficially understood change. To an important degree, these professionals will determine the future, and they cannot do so without the assistance of expert already on the inside who need to make knowledgeable and independent judgments about how recommended solutions relate to humans and their actions.

In fields such as engineering, medicine, law, journalism, education, and government, in addition to science and technology, various groups of experts assist the professional worker. Such experts often seem to operate in the shadows, collegially subordinate to the immediate goals of professionals whose judgments and decisions they facilitate, while retaining differing loyalties, seeking somewhat different goals, and sometimes being held accountable by different standards. Their societal functions require that sometimes apply knowledge in direct action. They need well-honed professional skills that are taken for granted in the occupations that visibly define our society’s workforce. They require specialized learning beyond the undergraduate liberal arts or sciences, and value systems that demand years of cultivation. Their views are often the most significant or valuable capital needed to direct the activities of the professionals themselves, particularly when it comes to the application of knowledge in action, the activities where all knowledge is best judged ship worth by analyzing the practical consequences of proposals or solutions.

3. Challenges and Ethical Considerations in Professional Expertise

1 Introduction

Professional expertise is crucial to assuring high standards for many goods and services. However, the presence of generically challenging ethical problems across most professions, regardless of area of expertise, makes public policy guidance to promote effective ethical expertise in all professions profoundly challenging. This paper takes as its point of departure the idea that each profession needs to be analyzed in respect of its unique regulatory challenges, its unique ethical burdens, and thus its unique ethical requirements. I explore some of the challenges faced by both professional experts and policymakers attempting to regulate professional experts. I use examples mainly from two contexts: that of experts within a general medical practice, and the specific role of medical clinicians who act as expert witnesses.

2 Skills, Comprehension, and Trust

The way public policy operates in relation to professional and expert skills is influenced by three perceptions of professional behavior, expressed in general terms through the economic, functionalist, and contract views of the professions. As O’Neill describes, professional skills should be understood in an intensive manner, particularly with regard to trades of skill which are sought for their central purpose. Thus, in fields such as law and medicine, skill is integral to the concern related to the patient, while the lawyer performs expert legal services. These skills differ markedly from other forms of work based on skill, particularly those providing ancillary services.

4. The Future of Professional Experts: Trends and Innovations

The future of professional expertise depends on a complex interaction between technological opportunities, the forms which social and economic organization take, and public perceptions of what professionals should and should not do. Of the three, changing organizational form is probably the most difficult to foresee. The shape of practically all organizations is in a state of flux, from the large corporation and the public bureaucracy to the small business, the municipal school, the university, and voluntary associations of every sort.

We can be somewhat more definitive about the prospects for professionals and professional work if we examine the history of expert knowledge as this history is currently perceived by modern professionals. The salient lesson is that technical and institutional change have always been characteristic of the professions and have never proceeded smoothly. The recent past simply revives an old partnership between experts and entrepreneurs. Novel technical ideas must be created and transmitted. These ideas must be “let loose” into society and led far from home.