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The question of whether financial planning is a “profession” is important to this study as this affects the level of ethical obligations the group has to clients, other stakeholders and society in general.

The Australian Council of Professions (2007), amongst others (ICAA 2006a), has described a profession as a disciplined group of individuals whose members must at all times adhere to ethical standards and hold themselves out as, and are accepted by the public as possessing, special knowledge and skills. As D’Ascenzo (2007a) has stated, provided professions accept the public interest as the ultimate test of the legitimacy of their practices, the professions are now more necessary than ever.

Barber (1988) and others (Wagner 2004; Miller 2002) have argued that a profession and the behaviour expected of its members follow a number of common criteria. That is: each profession should have:

2 in keeping with the Australian Council of Profession’s description, an altruistic motive or a primary orientation to the community interest rather than individual self interest, with a corresponding system of rewards that is primarily a set of symbols of work achievements;

3 a strong ethical context;

4 intense academic preparation and an esoteric common body of knowledge; and 5 a high degree of self control of behaviour usually articulated in a Code of Ethics.

In terms of altruism, Wagner (2004) has espoused that the proper function of the financial planner is the provision of expert financial advice. In performing this function, the financial planning profession has a duty to increase consumer confidence in financial advice.

Another characteristic of a profession is autonomy of decision-making and the exercise of professional judgment (Dal Pont 2003; Cull 2002). This assumes financial planners should be able to exercise considerable professional judgment in the performance of their tasks.

Callahan (1988) has suggested that the question of whether or not an occupation is more or less professionalized depends on how thoroughly it manifests these characteristics or criteria. For example, professions like medicine and law have strengths in some areas that others lack, such as institutionalized status.

Inevitably, not all professions meet all of the criteria and some occupations will meet some, but not others, however, this does not detract from the fact that there is an academic distinction that can be made between a profession and an occupation.

An emerging profession is usually described as an occupation which has some generalized knowledge and community orientation and whose status is clearly defined by others (Barber 1988), such as social work. Its members do not share equal amounts of any feature or characteristic that they may possess as a group, but the elite within that group are clearly professional. It is usually they who push for the advancement of professionalisation within the group.

This study has assumed that financial planning is an emerging profession on the basis of this description and evidence that financial planning at this current time meets only some of the traditional criteria of a profession (ICAA 2007a).

First, many argue financial planners do not have a common identity (Lefkowitz 2003 p. 396). Some perceive financial planners as financial product salesmen or agents for large financial services organisations, not professionals providing advisory services to their clients (Wolthuizen 2003; ASIC 2004d, 2006b). It is argued that financial planners currently suffer a crisis of identity in this regard (Longo 2000; Devenish 2004), not a common identity as would be expected by the literature.

In addition there appears to be much confusion among consumers distinguishing between a financial planner and other investment advisers and the nature of the services they provide (Walker 2003; Brown 2002; Briault 2007; D’Aloisio 2007). It is recognised that financial planning, as a method of providing financial advice, only began to crystallize in Australia in the 1980’s (FPA 2006b). It may be therefore that financial planning has not had time to develop a common identity or moral sense of its own, as manifested by a handing down of skills, learning and experience over generation of financial planning practitioners.

Secondly, it has been argued that financial planners are not motivated by altruism, but self interest. (Australian Investors Association survey 2004). In particular, recent research has shown that payment structures in the financial services industry create a system of rewards that is perceived as being associated with self interest and not other objectives such as work achievement (ASIC 2004b; 2005b, 2005; ICAA 2007b).

Thirdly, there has been debate about whether the level of education and qualification expected before a financial planner can practise is at a sufficient level (ICAA 2007a; FPA 2006f). For example, there are numerous education pathways recognised by ASIC Regulatory Guide 146 (ASIC 2008d) in order for a person to become authorised to represent an AFS Licensee, many of which are not tertiary qualifications, nor require a mandatory period of intense study.

Despite this evidence, it has argued in this thesis that even an emerging profession such as financial planning, where the social and economic outcomes of the services they provide to Australian consumer are critical, requires a strong ethical context. This means an understanding, commitment to and application of a set of ethical principles to which the whole group agree to adhere. These obligations sit above those legal standards set by government. The commensurate ethical obligations of financial planners as an emerging profession provide added impetus for a study into the factors influencing its decision-making.