Vesting Authority

If a friend tells you not to use a particular brand of electronics, due to poor quality and a high risk of fire, you will most likely ignore them.  There are a lot of factors that go into that decision but in most cases for most people we'll ignore them.  If another friend a week later who is a fireman tells you not to use the same brand and reiterates the same reasons then you will be more likely to listen to them.  This is because we associate authority with job roles.  We think because it's their job they know more about it.

There is however something else at play here.  If a friend who works in retail said the same thing again you would not be likely to listen.  Even though in their job they might see a lot of complaints about their products, returns, or even product recalls.  The fireman gets precedence because they are in a professional role.  There is an assumption we make, whether we do so consciously or not, we think that professionals are less likely to be incompetent in their job.  We think that they don't skive off, they don't cut corners, they are good at their job, and that they know everything about their work.  Yet when you say this out loud you realise that sounds short sighted, and overly optimistic.

Ultimately the decision we make is defined by faith.  We accept the authority of the people we have faith in.  For those who are religious, who have faith in a higher power, for them there is no authority higher than that power.  A little closer to the ground the same thing happens with the people whose authority we accept.  We believe the fireman because we have faith in them, and believe that everything we said above is true.  Except that's not objective faith, it's blind faith.  It's blind because we don't question it.  At the end of the day the jobs these people do, professional or not, are still jobs.  It's an uncomfortable thought for us to have that Doctors, Teachers, Nurses, Firemen etc, can have a job they treat the way we treat our own.  The way someone in an office can hate their job some days, can put off work, or do things they really don't want to.  We have this idea with professional jobs this does not happen.  Why?  Some jobs can seem dangerous to us, but when it becomes routine, and you do it every day, you become desensitized and you eventually look at that job the same way you look at any other job.

I have worked in healthcare before, and when I did it opened my eyes to the humanity of the people that work within it.  Your Doctor is a person like anyone else and their job will be like any other job, there will be days they love it and days they hate it.  As for proficiency I care not to comment at this time, you can infer what you like from the tone of this post.

When you put faith in a professional, we can explain the reason why they get priority over others with simple maths.  If you listened to the first friend, you would be putting faith in them and them alone.  When you put faith in a professional you put faith in them, their manager, any professional body they belong to, and the organisation they work for.  This hedges the faith you are placing on them across several other people.  The problem I have with that is that you are having faith in people you have never met, likely never will meet, and know nothing about.  In the case of the manager, they are just that, you should know from your own experience the varying efficiency and effectiveness of managers.  Most are bad for the simple reason that they commit the cardinal sin of managing - that the people you manage have to do things your way - what works for you might not work for someone else, you need to recognise that to manage people effectively.

As for the professional body, with those in most cases you register and you rarely have any interaction with them.  It can be years between contact and even then it can be trivial.  The idea that a professional body actively monitors your work is misguided.  As for the organisation they work for, in their case the manager is actually the one responsible for highlighting problems.  Most organisations are ignorant to their staff's problems, and they are most ignorant to problems with management as the critique never makes it up the ladder of responsibility.

While it is possible to have faith in all of these people, the idea that being in a certain job gives you authority over the subject matter is flawed.  "I should know, it's my job" is not a persuasive argument for me.  It's anecdotal and as such should contribute no more to convincing me than someone's personal experience would be.  There is the question of confidence that underlies all of this, that is to say that those who work in a given job become more confident in speaking about it, and we are more likely to believe someone who tells us something with confidence.

If you want me to listen to you then you will need to give me a reason to do so.  Doing something as a job is not reason enough for me.  If you are good at your job and understand what it is you do then you will be able to explain the reasoning behind what you tell me.  If you can't explain why you should do something, that it's just something you have been told not to do, that isn't merit enough for me to listen.