Collegiality as a Professional Virtue

Craig K. Ihara
stead, college here is used in its most generic sense. Websters defines it as a collection, assemblage, body, or society of men, invested with special powers and rights, performing certain duties, or engaged in some common employment or pursuit; as, a college of physicians; a college of bishops; the electoral college. Substituting this definition of college into our definition of collegial, we can define collegial as relating or belonging to a body or society of people, invested with special powers and rights, performing certain duties, or engaged in some common employment or pursuit. Related to this is the notion of colleague, which, in its broadest sense, refers to any fellow professional, or more narrowly, to a fellow professional with whom one is closely associated: for a doctor, someone practicing medicine in the same hospital; for a lawyer, someone practicing law in the same firm. While edifying all this is still vague, especially from the moral point of view, what is being advocated when one urges collegiality? The likely initial response is that collegiality amounts to the fulfillment of certain openended obligations to ones colleagues that ensue by virtue of membership in a particular group. Generally speaking, these obligations involve cooperating with and supporting colleagues in carrying out their professional duties. Given this, does advocating collegiality amount to merely urging on professionals a set of responsibilities to colleagues? This cannot be adequate, for even if we know that someone fulfills his or her professional obligations, unless we understand the basis for the behavior, we cannot be certain about his or her collegiality. For example, we could mistakenly regard as collegial a spy whose cover is that of a dedicated academic. On the basis of the spys conduct, we could for years regard him or her as a model of collegiality. Given his or her

Introduction
Today, collegiality is not taken very seriously. In the fields of medicine, engineering, law, and journalism, among others, the notion of collegiality has become nebulous and ghostlike, being little understood and consequently having little impact. Even worse, collegiality is often associated with protection of group self-interest, such as medical schools keeping the numbers of doctors down in order to keep income high, or with special privileges or professional courtesies, such as one police officer not ticketing another. In Section I, I attempt to clarify the notion of collegiality, especially collegiality as a virtue. In Section II, I try to dispel some misapprehensions about collegiality by arguing that collegiality is important to society as well as to professionals and that professionals have nonmaterialistic reasons to value collegiality. Finally, in Section III, I try to shed light on some of the moral problems associated with collegiality, especially where collegiality seems to conflict with norms of professionalism.

I. What Is Collegiality?
Both collegiality and colleague derive from the Latin corn-, meaning together, and legare, meaning to choose for an embassy or mission. Websters Unabridged Dictionary defines collegial as relating to a college, having the nature of a college. To our modern ear, this misleadingly suggests that collegiality has to do only with institutions of higher learning. InCopyright 0 1988 by Craig K. Ihara. Used with permission of Craig K. Ihara.

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motivations, however, this would be incorrect because such a person would not have the orientation toward other academics that constitutes collegiality. For such a person, academic colleagues would be mere dupes, a means to his or her own ends. Collegiality must then be understood as more than proper behavior toward ones colleagues. Collegiality is better defined in terms of having the proper professional attitude or wientation. To take this approach to collegiality is to consider it as a kind of professional virtue, a trait or characteristic that is meritorious from a professional point of view. In coming to a clearer conception of collegiality as a professional virtue, one of the first and most obvious comparisons is with the virtue of friendship. Both are primarily concerned with relationships, and we associate collegiality with a mutually positive attitude between people, just as we do friendship, Aristotle says that friendship must be reciproi cal and a form of love or affection. Is this true of collegiality as well? It seems correct to say that collegiality must be reciprocal. Just as a one-sided friendship is no friendship at all, collegiality cannot be sustained by a single individual. What then of love or, more generally, affection? Certainly we think of good colleagues as enjoying a closeness akin to friendship, and many colleagues quite naturally develop friendship and affection out of their close association. Nonetheless, affection clearly is not essential for collegiality. In order to see this, it is helpful to notice that colleague and collegiality are not analogous to friend and friendship. People can be colleagues without being collegial, but people cannot be friends without sharing a friendship. Collegiality is a normative standard for colleagues. The relationship between colleagues ought to be characterized by collegiality, while the relationship between friends simply is one of friendship. In this respect, the concepts of colleague and collegiality differ importantly from those of friend and friendship: Friendship necessarily characterizes the relationship between friends, but collegiality does not necessarily describe the relationship between colleagues. It is membership in some profession that

makes one a colleague, while it is individual feeling and commitment that make one a friend. Two people on a desert island can become friends, but not colleagues. A person can be introduced to someone for the first time as a colleague: This is your new colleague, Mr. Russell. It is presumptuous, at the very least, to introduce a new acquaintance as a friend: This is your new friend, Mr. Jones. Affection for someone, and hence friendship, is impossible without some personal knowledge of that person. But because being a colleague is a relationship based on ones role within some larger framework, two people can be good colleagues without any such personal knowledge or affection. It follows that affection is not logically necessary for collegiality. Neither is affection necessary in order for collegiality to promote support and cooperation among professionals. This is not to deny that affection between colleagues would promote such cooperation and support, but rather to recognize that mutual affection among a large number of people is both difficult to achieve and unnecessary. Just as baseball players who dislike each other can still work together to form a championship team, so, from the point of view of a profession, what is important is not necessarily affection, but some less demanding basis for cooperation. If affection does not characterize collegiality, what does? A likely suggestion is respect. Might collegiality be defined as reciprocal respect? What is respect? It is a pro-attitude based on some positive assessment of worth from some specific point of view.2 We cannot respect what we utterly despise. We are said to respect things of all sorts-people, beliefs and ideas, law, the Constitution, even nature. With regard to people, we respect their good qualities, especially those for which they themselves are responsible-their goodness as a human being, or th* goodness in a specific role or from a particular point of view. Why should professionals respect each other? Part of the answer is obvious. Professionals are people who have specific kinds of qualifications, typically involving mastery of certain skills and a certain body of knowledge. Professionals are worthy of respect, at least in

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part, because of their professional expertise. There is another reason why professionals should respect each other. This is the commitment they have to a set of professional values, which includes ideals such as service and standards of conduct such as confidentiality. Since, from the point of view of the profession, such a commitment is necessarily a good thing, it also serves as a basis for professional respect. What does respecting someone for some good characteristic entail? In general, it requires being disposed to acknowledge and recognize those respect-worthy qualities. More specifically, respect for a persons expertise entails acting in ways that rely on that knowledge and competence. One who has respect for someones special knowledge and skills will be confident that he or she will act knowledgeably and skillfully. Respect for a professionals commitment to professional ideals and standards also entails a kind of confidence-concerning not the persons capacities, but his or her intentions. A person who respects anothers professional commitment feels confident that the professional will use his or her expertise wisely. Colleagues who have a mutual respect for each others commitment to the profession and its goals rely on each other to perform as they should. This entails a willingness to treat colleagues as responsible, autonomous agents as well as to conduct ones own responsibilities with a confidence that others are doing their part. This analysis of collegiality in terms of respect at least fits our observation that affection and some kind of personal knowledge of a person are not essential to collegiality. One can respect a colleague simply because he or she is a professional and is presumed to have the basic qualifications of a professional, without having a personal acquaintance or affection for him or her. However, respect for one anothers expertise, or even for their values and commitments, does not necessarily unite people in any kind of cooperative enterprise. By itself, respect does not necessarily bridge the distance between individuals. People in different professions might be described as having a mutual respect, but their respect would not amount to collegiality. Our shipwrecked pair

can come to a mutual respect based on skills and commitments both possess, but not to collegiality. One can even respect the skill and the objectives of bitter enemies within ones own profession, trusting and relying on their abilities and commitments only in order to best calculate their downfall. What is missing is a sense of what I shall call, for lack of a better term, a sense of connectedness. By this I mean an awareness of sharing with someone the bond of both being parts of a larger, interdependent whole. One clear example of this awareness is ones sense of being part of a family and of being specially connected with others in that family. We say that blood is thicker than water, meaning that we are connected to family members in a way we are not connected to others, and we feel that therefore, a special kind of cooperativeness and support is appropriate. Family ties are among the strongest kinds of connectedness; other, weaker, kinds of connectedness also exist. In our otherwise individualistic society, team sports are an area in which people are expected to work together, and even to sacrifice their personal objectives, for the sake of a collective goal. A good team player has a sense of connectedness to his teammates that we call team spirit. Someone with team spirit identifies with the group and feels a special bond with other team members such that he or she is disposed to help and support them in their pursuit of team objectives. Other kinds of connectedness may be more general, as with those who belong to the same religion, ethnic group, or country. In such cases, the connections can be so weak that they are only invoked in unusual circumstances, as when countrymen find themselves thrown together in a foreign land or when ones ethnic group is a struggling minority. Clearly, ones sense of connectedness varies with circumstance, and especially with the closeness of the bond. Closeness is largely a function of social or personal perceptions, but it tends to vary with how often and how intimately we associate with others. Generally, ones sense of connectedness to someone from the old home town is stronger than the sense of connectedness to someone who is simply a fellow American. Furthermore, a sense of connectedness may

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have nothing to do with respect. One can recognize and accept familial relationships without believing that ones parent or sibling is worthy of respect. Assuming that this is all true of a sense of connectedness in general, what of connectedness as it applies to collegiality? A sense of connectedness between colleagues is a sense of sharing membership in a larger whole, namely, the profession. On one level, ones membership in a profession is established through formal procedures that test a variety of attriprimarily professional expertise. butes, However, on the level of collegiality, such formal tests only provide the basis to assume (1) that colleagues have the skills, knowledge, and experience that enable the professional to further professional ends; and (2) that they have committed themselves to the profession in such a way that they have internalized professional values and objectives. Ones sense of connectedness with colleagues is, then, base&l on the presumption that those formally recognized as professionals do in fact form a community because of their shared skills and values. Even though, as I have argued, respect by itself is inadequate to account for collegiality, collegial connectedness entails respect. This is because collegial connectedness simply is an awareness of being part of a cooperative undertaking created by shared commitments and expertise. As such, from a professional point of view, such commitments and expertise are necessarily good. This is so even if the skills in themselves are not valuable outside of a specialized professional context, e.g., the ability of lawyers to understand particular sorts of arcane language. Collegial connectedness entails a respect for professional expertise and a commitment to professional ends because they are the basis of any professional community and, as such, are necessarily worthy of respect from the point of view of the profession and professionals within that profession. However, as I have argued, collegial connectedness consists in more than having respect for professional expertise and commitment: it has most essentially to do with having common values and collective goals. These common values and objectives provide the basis for mutual support and cooperation be-

cause given those commitments, supporting and cooperating with colleagues is one way of furthering aims to which one also is committed. The closest analogy for this kind of collegial cooperation, support, and respect is the aforementioned example of teammates who work together to achieve a collective goal. It is this support and cooperation that was missing when we tried to understand collegiality in terms of respect alone. The objection might be raised that cooperation and support cannot be necessary for collegiality because when we consider a profession in its entirety, it is obvious that there often is fierce competition among professionals, which seems to be the furthest thing possible from mutual support and cooperation. Even if we grant that some of this competitiveness is misguided and the result of a lack of collegiality, some kinds of competitiveness seem to be inescapable parts of some professions (e.g., law). Does this present a serious problem for an analysis of collegiality as connectedness? Now, ones sense of connectedness, and hence ones sense of collegiality, varies with closeness. Those professionals within ones office, department, division, etc., will most appropriately be considered and treated as colleagues. Nonetheless, some sense of collegiality, and hence some level of cooperation and support, is appropriate among all members of a profession who share the same professional values and objectives. What, then, of competition among professionals belonging to different professional organizations? This objection assumes that all competition must be incompatible with all forms of support and cooperation. Such is not the case. Some kinds of competition and cooperation are compatible in certain contexts. Take the competition between opposing athletic teams. Each team has, first of all, the goal to win. Insofar as each member of the team has this goal, teammates share a common objective, which they do not share with those on the opposing team. Yet this is only the most obvious part of the picture. Winning is not everything, even in the minds of most athletes. If it were, having an opponent forfeit would be just as desirable as winning on the playing field. Such a win would not be satisfying

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because part of what athletes want to do is to play the game, and play it well. Ones prowess can only be tested and demonstrated when the opposing team also plays to win. The ends of any sport, including the improvement of performance, can only be furthered by outstanding competition. Competition, then, can be a mode of cooperation. The truth of this becomes all the more apparent when one notes that only certain kinds of competition, i.e., competition within appropriate formal or informal standards, are condoned and encouraged. Insofar as opposing teams play by the rules, their competition presupposes a common commitment to the sport. Playing by these rules also entails cooperation. An awareness that this kind of competition has a cooperative purpose generates a sense of connectedness with opposing players that parallels collegiality. The best,professional example of this kind of cooperative competition is probably to be found in law. The adversarial system is constructed so that competition between lawyers is an integral part of the pursuit of justice. Even though there is no love lost between defense and prosecution attorneys, as long as the legal rules concerning evidence, testimony, and professional conduct are consciously and voluntarily followed, some level of collegial cooperation exists. A sense of connectedness here, understood as a sense of working together as integral parts of a system intended to promote justice, would promote that voluntary compliance, which is essential if the system is to operate successfully. Another highly competitive profession, and one with far fewer formal constraints, is journalism. Yet here, too, there are shared commitments to professional values and standards. The rule of never divulging asource is one that many journalists have obeyed at great personal cost. Furthermore, other journalists have provided them with support regardless of specific institutional affiliations, personal acquaintance, etc .-not out of some general moral concern, but out of a sense of connectedness. As in other cases, the competition found in journalism coexists with underlying commitments that entail subtle forms of cooperation and support. In sum, a competitive spirit among professionals is not neces-

sarily antithetical to the concept of professionalism as a form of cooperation and shared commitments. I began by characterizing collegiality, at least in part, as a set of obligations to ones colleagues. I further proposed that collegiality can also be understood as a kind of virtue and undertook to analyze what kind of virtue that might be. The conclusion I have reached is that collegiality is a kind of connectedness grounded in respect for professional expertise and in a commitment to the goals and values of the profession, and that, as such, collegiality includes a disposition to support and cooperate with ones colleagues.

II. Why Is Collegiality Valuable?

If the foregoing definition of collegiality is correct, the obvious question to ask is, why regard it as a professional virtue? That is, why regard collegiality as a trait to be valued and encouraged in professionals? This question needs to be answered from two points of view: the point of view of the larger society, of which specific professions are a part, and the point of view of professionals themselves. Both are important given the way collegiality can degenerate into a kind of group self-interest in which, under the guise of collegiality, professionals aim at preserving or enhancing the social, political, and material advantages of their profession (for example, invoking collegiality as a rationale for protecting rather than exposing incompetent colleagues). Given this tendency, there needs to be some clear reason why society should support, rather than suppress, professional collegiality. Furthermore, if society is to have much confidence that collegiality will be properly utilized to promote social goals, there must be some explanation why professionals themselves should value collegiality for reasons other than material gain. The answer to these questions about the value of collegiality is inextricably tied to the notion of a professional community and its value, for collegiality functions primarily to

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maintain professional communities and to further the ends and the values to which they are committed. From the point of view of society, collegiality is a virtue in the instrumental sense of being conducive to social utility; from the.professional point of view, collegiality is a virtue because it is integral to the pursuit of professional excellence. We must at least briefly consider what it means to have a professional community. For our purposes, a professional community consists of people who share a sense of mission. Insofar as all professionals are presumed to have this, the professional community in one sense includes all those formally admitted to the profession. This, however, is just a presumption, and one we know to be false; for example, many people become doctors in order to enjoy a high income, not to heal the sick. Normatively, the professional community consists of only those who have in fact mad5 and maintained a commitment to professional goals and values. Increasingly, this sense of mission has been lost in professions in which professionals are seen as individual entrepreneurs who are primarily seeking private wealth, security, or other self-interested ends. The ideal of some kind of public service must be a primary goal for any professional community. Professions are essentially defined and justified by their function in a larger society; this is what distinguishes professions from clubs. A professional enjoys a status and respect due to one who is dedicated to utilizing a skill valuable to society. On the other hand, clubs, e.g., chess clubs, rifle clubs, or dance clubs, are also associations within a larger society. However, even though club members often possess some refined skill or specialized knowledge, they are not accorded the same regard or privileges as are professionals. At least in part, this is because the club members skills are exercised for the individuals own enjoyment, not for the greater good. (Service clubs, on the other hand, aim at the good of the larger community, but members do not utilize some special skill or knowledge.) Collegiality among professionals is, then, a complex of dispositions directed at those with whom one collectively pursues the goal of some kind of public service, for example, public health, justice, or education. If pro-

fessionals are predominately motivated by profit, collegiality loses its central social meaning.3 When this happens, collegiality is reduced to a kind of conspiracy to perpetuate, preserve, enhance, and protect each others ability to profit-for example, by limiting entry into the profession or protecting incompetent practitioners. Such goals put a profession directly at odds with the larger society of which it is a part. If this were to happen on a large scale, our appreciation of the proper function of collegiality and its potential value would fade out of our social consciousness. Once we understand the necessary connection between collegiality and public service, we can see the legitimate justification for the emphasis collegiality places on helping, trusting, and cooperating with other professionals. Collegiality is the bond that unites individuals in a cooperative endeavor. Its exclusivity is a necessary feature of this and is justified only insofar as such cooperation is important to fulfilling its social function. In this regard, collegiality is like friendship in Aristotles sense, as Alasdair MacIntyre describes it in his influential book After Virtue. According to MacIntyre, Aristotelian friendship is necessary for the existence of any community. It entails a shared recognition of and pursuit of a common good, and it presupposes a wide range of agreement on goods and virtues: . . . We are to think then of friendship as being the sharing of all in the common project of creating and sustaining the life of the city, a sharing incorporated in the immediacy of an individuals particular friendships. This comparison with friendship in MacIntyres sense suggests another reason why a professional community, and hence collegiality, is of value. A community is not important solely because of the goals of social service at which it aims. Such a goal, however noble, makes collegiality and community mere instruments to the attainment of some external good. In discussing the value of collegiality it is also important to understand its intrinsic value to the professional, quite apart from whatever value he or she places on public service.

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MacIntyre is helpful in this regard, for he distinguishes what he calls internal goods from the external or instrumental goods society obtains from the exercise of professional skills. Such goods are internal in the sense that they can only be achieved, or even recognized, by those who are engaged in what he calls a practice. Professions are clearly a form of practice, since practices are any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity.5 Internal goods can only be appreciated by those engaged in a practice because internal goods are those that are generated by the rules, values, goals, and standards of excellence of that practice. There can be no such thing as a job well done in medicine, engineering, or law independently of the standards of excellence established by those professions. The satisfaction of doing well in the classroom or the courtroom, or even of appreciating the skill and talent manifested by others in such professional contexts, is only available to those who can understand the practice from the inside. To those professionals who have internalized the standards of their profession and are fully participating within the practice their profession defines, the professional community provides a rich source of satisfaction. For example, the successful completion of a particularly difficult surgery can be rewarding to the professional not only for its outcome, but also for the skillful manner in which it is performed. In the light of what MacIntyre says, a professional community is important not only because it achieves goals like greater health or justice for all, but because it is itself a source of value for those who participate in its activity. Even this, however, does not seem to distinguish collegiality as having anything more than an instrumental role in the attainment of goals. In both cases, the value of collegiality lies in the way it supports professional communities and hence is productive of the external as well as the internal goods that community generates. But. there is another important MacIntyrean point to be made in this regard. The standards of any practice, or any profession, include or at least imply a conception of the ideal practitioner. Obviously, in the pro-

fessions this will be someone who is supremely skilled technically and who is firmly committed to the public good. The ideal will also include those virtues that are essential to performing the professional role. For a doctor, the virtues of patience, sensitivity, and warmth are as much a part of the ideal of the profession as are diagnostic skill and technical proficiency. Part of the role of such a professional must be the maintenance and support of the professional community. Given the value of community, someone committed to a professions goals and values must also be someone who contributes to strengthening, rather than diminishing, that community of which he or she is a part. Saying this entails attributing the characteristic of collegiality to the ideal professional, for it is through collegiality that one upholds the professional community. How does this help us with our question of the value of collegiality? It does so by giving us another dimension of collegialitys worth. Up to this point, its value depended on the instrumental role it plays in the creation and maintenance of community and hence its role in the promotion of the external good of public service and the generation of internal goods created by professional standards of excellence. In addition, collegiality is itself part of the ideal to which anyone practicing a profession must aspire. For such a person, collegiality will have an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value. Collegiality will be part of the ideal to which a professional aspires, not simply a necessary condition for its attainment. In other words, collegiality is itself a kind of excellence for a professional, and in that sense, it is a professional virtue.

III. Limits of Collegiality

Collegiality is but one value among many that professionals possess as human beings. As such, there are times when professionals must choose between being a good colleague and being a good friend to a colleague. In such cases, there is no avoiding the fact that trying to be both a good colleague and a good friend complicates the moral equation.

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Ordinarily, when a colleague needs support, a good colleague will provide it; when a colleague needs help, a collegial professional will grant that aid. Clearly, however, this should not be the case when a colleague abuses his or her position for personal advantage. Granting aid out of friendship in such cases amounts to collusion and entails abandoning ones allegiance to the professional values of which collegiality is both a part and a mainstay. Those who seek personal gain, or even those who seek unselfish goals but do so by misuse of their positions, cannot enlist collegial help by appealing to collegiality. When a colleague invites collusion or a cover-up of professional misconduct, collegiality simply is not at issue. In such situations, professional misconduct is in clear conflict with the very basis on which collegiality depends. Collegiality does not provide a reason to help a colleague steal from the company. Nor does it provide a reason to shield a colleague who ig not doing his or her job or who is violating the standards of the profession. Morally speaking, such professionals are not colleagues, any more than someone who betrays your trust is a friend. Just as sentiments of friendship are misplaced in the latter case, so is collegiality misplaced in the former. When someone proves himself or herself not to be a friend after all, his or her claim to friendship no longer has any force. Similarly, collegiality simply does not extend to those who culpably fail to live up to the standards and goals of the profession. In a certain respect, recognizing abuse is less problematic in collegiality than in friendship. This is primarily because collegiality occurs in a professional context in which there are explicit statements of goals, expectations, and standards of behavior. Friendships exist in tacit, informal contexts, and to a large degree the bases and expectations of every friendship are different. Because of this, the conditions under which friendship is betrayed are likely to be less precise, and hence more difficult to ascertain. Furthermore, friendships are loyalties to persons, whereas collegiality is ultimately based on loyalty to the profession and its values. Friendships are unique relations with specific persons, and it is not difficult to find oneself in a situation in which a friend has

done something morally wrong. The fact of his or her wrongdoing does not necessarily undermine the friendship unless it is a violation of the trust established by the friendship, or unless it somehow challenges the validity of the relationship, e.g., if the action reveals the person to be someone other than what he or she appeared to be. Significant changes in behavior do not necessarily damage specific friendships. A friend who turns to drink, or starts to cheat on his or her spouse or employer, or commits some criminal act, does not necessarily forfeit the loyalty owed by a friend. The only way that friendship can be undermined is through betrayal of the relationship. If a person proves not to be a friend, then loyalty to that person is no longer appropriate. In contrast, immoralities committed by a colleague, e.g., against clients or patients, are likely to undermine collegiality. In part this is because any profession will have goals, many of which are themselves aspirations to fairness or service such that most immoralities will be direct violations of those goals. Professions are typically integrated into the larger society and defined by a goal of public service, and for these reasons they are likely to incorporate the moral standards of the larger society. Friendships, on the other hand, typically do not include specific objectives as essential to the friendship. Thus, if both relationships obtain, the concrete moral dilemma will be much more difficult to resolve. Conceptually, what one should do as a friend should be kept distinct from what one should do as a colleague. The foregoing holds true for anyone who has clearly abandoned professionalism or disqualified himself or herself as a professional. Assuming that the misconduct is a serious one, such professionals cannot expect support on grounds of collegiality. There are, of course, borderline cases. In some of these cases, failures are minor and do not indicate any loss of professional commitment or professional competence. In others, in which the lapses are exceptional but may be excused or explained away by external pressures, exhaustion, mental strain, etc., the resulting unprofessional conduct will, of course, have co be judged within the context of the professionals past history and probable future performance. In any case, being collegial to someone in such a

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borderline situation is not easy. What do you do if a colleague confesses some professional misconduct or some significant lapse in professional conduct and asks you to help cover up or simply overlook it? A professional would have to consider whether the profession would or would not be better off giving him or her another chance; whether nondisclosure itself would be a serious violation of professional conduct (probably with serious offences it would); and whether the mechanisms put in place by the profession could deal productively with such a case. What if a professional is simply no longer capable of performing up to professional standards? People burn out, lose interest, fail to maintain competency, or decline mentally and physically for a wide variety of reasons. Insofar as such loss of capacity has been within ones control, the situation does not differ greatly from that discussed above. Maintenance of professional expertise is one important professional responsibility, failure of which should be treated as any other. However, when a professional is not at fault in the loss of his or her capacity to perform as a professional, the situation is much more diflicult. In such cases, the bonds of collegiality remain, since there has been no betrayal of professional commitment. Aiding a colleague in this situation is clearly the collegial course of action. How it should be done depends on whether the problem is or is not remediable. If it is, provision should be made to remedy. If not, some way must be devised to ease the person out of the profession with as little damage and trauma as possible to both the individual and the profession, just as a permanently disabled soldier must be provided for, even though continuing as a soldier is out of the question. Since establishing culpability in cases like burnout is difficult, if not impossible, the practical collegial response in such cases, lacking concrete evidence to the contrary, may well be to treat such borderline cases as nonculpable. This presumption would at least be consistent with the general assumption made about the responsibility and conscientiousness of colleagues. Each profession must establish for itself, either in its code of conduct or by tradition,

the degree of latitude individual professionals are to have in dealing with such cases. Professionals must be regarded as responsible agents by the profession, and as such they must be accorded some degree of professional judgment in matters basic to the maintenance of the professional community. Forcing professionals to rigidly follow professional codes would diminish rather than enhance the profession. Professional judgment must take all this into account. Ones overall judgment in such situations, as opposed to ones professional judgment, will be all the more complex because of general considerations of compassion, or friendship, or personal risk (e.g., liability to incur serious legal action). Collegiality does not exhaust ones loyalties and responsibilities as a professional, much less as a human being. Rather, the demands of collegiality arise from a complex conception of the role and the values of being a professional, and as such must be given weighty consideration by anyone who wishes to regard himself or herself as such. I have tried to allay certain fears and misapprehensions about collegiality by providing a conceptual analysis of it, by clarifying its value both to society and to professionals themselves, and by considering what collegiality entails in those cases in which professionals fail to live up to standards of professionalism. I have shown that far from being a questionable kind of cliquishness, collegiality, properly understood as a sense of connectedness with colleagues, plays a central role in the concept of professionalism and in the maintenance of professional communities. Furthermore, insofar as professionals serve the public good, collegiality is valuable to society. Insofar as collegiality both supports and partially constitutes the life professionals live, professionals themselves have a powerful reason not to allow collegiality to degenerate into a cooperative pursuit of money, power, or other personal gain. Finally, once the foundations of collegiality are understood, many apparent conflicts between collegiality and professional and moral conduct can more easily be resolved. All in all, collegiality is a professional virtue that should be taken more seriously than is often the case.

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No&s
Special thanks go to Albert Flores for his editorial guidance and encouragement. 1. Richard McKeon, Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Random House, 1941), Book 8, Chapter 2. 2. For a careful, in-depth analysis of respect

and respect-for-persons theories, see Carl Cranor, On Respecting Human Beings as Persons, Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (1983): 103-l 7. 3. Shannon Young, Commercialization and the Professions, Business M Professional Ethics 2, no. 2 (1983): 16. 4. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 146. 5. Ibid., p. 175.