Establishing a Sound Public Protection Argument

Shimberg, Roederer, and Schmitt (Reference Shimberg, Roederer and Schmitt1994) argue that the overriding issues when deciding whether to regulate a profession are (a) whether unlicensed practice constitutes a serious risk to the public (e.g., “life, health, safety, or economic well-being” [p. 4]), (b) whether consumers are able to evaluate the qualifications of service providers, and (c) whether the public benefit outweighs the potential for services to be limited due to licensing constraints. It is also worth noting here that we believe that Shimberg et al. very carefully chose their words to draw a distinction between unlicensed practice and incompetent practitioners. Although a licensing process helps to promote competence, it is not a failsafe.

Even among professions that should obviously be regulated, such as healthcare providers (HCPs), we have limited data on how regulatory bodies enforce competence standards. At entry in the United States and Canada, many professions require a competence assessment and submission of appropriate educational credentials. However, after initial licensure, licensing boards may struggle to promote and enforce competence standards. Roberts (Reference Roberts2016) notes that practitioners who are older and presumably the furthest from initial licensure are the most likely to be sanctioned by their regulatory boards. Moreover, Roberts notes that the quality of clinical care is not the most common reason for board complaints among physiotherapists, and that nearly two-thirds of complaints result in no action by the regulatory agency. These data are supported by statistics published by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB, 2014), which show that only about one-third of all actions taken in 2012 by medical boards involved restricting, suspending, revoking, surrendering, or denying a license.

In this vein, we ask, “Where is the evidence that the practice of I-O psychology should be regulated,” specifically that the public is potentially harmed by unlicensed practice and that the public would benefit from regulation? It is not promising that the LCIOP discussion paper can not clearly articulate a few common scenarios that show that an I-O psychologist could harm the public in terms of the criteria Shimberg et al. (Reference Shimberg, Roederer and Schmitt1994) laid out and how a regulatory board could prevent, mitigate, or remediate the harm. The LCIOP points to a survey of SIOP members, but this audience should be especially sensitive to the limits of what is essentially a speculative evaluation of risk (cf. Axton, Porr, Dumani, & Ferro, Reference Axton, Porr, Dumani and Ferro2016). Moreover, we find this evidence incomplete in its support for licensure with respect to the aforementioned criteria. On one hand, we should consider whether those same survey respondents would agree that persons without adequate training in the behavioral sciences are currently being put into roles requiring these skills in numbers that are resulting in public harm (i.e., is this problem real or imagined?). On the other hand, we should consider what a licensing board could do to prevent, mitigate, or remediate the harm done in that situation.

We agree that a formal “risk assessment” is appropriate, but rather than rely on survey data that might reflect an incomplete understanding of the concepts of harm, personal biases, and the tendency for incumbents to inflate the importance of their roles, we suggest a stronger method such as a critical incidents study. By collecting data on actual situations in which an I-O psychologist could have directly caused harm to consumers or the public, the public would be in a better position to determine whether the field is in need of regulation. We further suggest that such a study must focus on direct and tangible harm rather than indirect (e.g., adverse impact or an increased risk of health consequences) or speculative harm (e.g., lack of benefit from a poorly designed wellness program).

As a first step in the risk assessment, we agree with the LCIOP that we must determine who is put at risk by an I-O psychologist's lack of competence. Who are our clients? Do we consider employees of an organization for which we consult to be at risk? Do we include examinees of a licensing test? Do we include applicants for positions within a company for which we work? What if the organization bought a selection tool we designed off the shelf? The second step in the risk assessment is determining what professional practices are likely to engender such risk. If we create an employee survey, are we creating a risk? Or is it only if we interpret the survey results or recommend an organizational action based on the results that we could cause harm? To what extent are we obligated to prevent harm among clients using off-the-shelf products? A third issue is where ultimate accountability lies. In a profession where there is an emphasis on team-based approaches, how would you determine which practitioner would be answerable to a regulatory board? Would it always be the most senior team member? Could we separate out individual contributions? Would we promote alternative titles simply because taking responsibility for every team member on a large project is simply too risky? Would we stifle the industry by creating a regulatory environment that discourages teamwork and collaboration?

A fourth issue, which we believe the LCIOP article overlooks, is whether existing remedies are sufficient to protect the public from harm. From this perspective, we need to consider the gravity of the harm an incompetent person providing I-O psychology services could do. For example, it is not difficult in medicine or pharmacy to imagine a situation where an incompetent service provider could do something that would incapacitate a consumer in a way that he or she would be unable to remediate the error. Is that the case in I-O psychology? Another way of looking at this issue is whether a licensing board can do things that a civil court could not. Licensing boards have the ability to investigate malpractice, call witnesses, and relatively quickly prevent an incompetent practitioner from providing services, with the intention of protecting the public in a preventative sense. Are there cases where prevention is required because remediation is not possible or feasible?

This begs the question: Who we are trying to protect by licensing I-O psychologists? Are we really trying to protect the public, or are we trying to advance and promote the profession? From reading the LCIOP article, the public protection argument remains unclear at best, and there are some references to promoting the profession. As I-O psychologists, it is incumbent upon us to put the public good before the motives of advancing the profession.

Practical Considerations of Establishing a Licensure Process

Besides the primary consideration of the potential costs and benefits to the public of licensing I-O psychologists, we have to consider whether a licensing process for a small, diverse profession is practically feasible. As a first step, as pointed out by the LCIOP, we need to get existing and potentially overlapping regulatory boards to acknowledge a common definition of an I-O psychologist, whether that be through title alone or a defined scope of work. That entails getting the boards or regulatory agency (this differs jurisdiction to jurisdiction) to enact special rules. Presumably at some point, legislatures in each jurisdiction would have to pass laws to the same effect in order to give the board rules the full power of law and enable enforcement of licensure standards. This process would have to be completed for 53 jurisdictions in the United States and presumably the Canadian provinces as well. Timing is a factor, also. Some jurisdictions might have sunset provisions that would remove the regulatory agency if there was not sufficient justification for keeping it. To the extent that jurisdictions have, at any given time, substantial differences in how they choose to regulate the profession, the basis for regulation may come into question. Are we as a profession up to the task of creating and maintaining licensing standards at this scale?

Overstated Benefits of Regulating the Profession

The motivations undergirding LCIOP's position seem to be based largely on the desire to protect I-O psychologists from assaults on the credibility of our work. This motive is often masked by common platitudes such as “Licensure will help promote the status of the profession” or “Oversight will differentiate I-Os from other management consultants” or “Regulation will ensure that graduates from I-O programs meet a certain level of competence.” Although each of these manifestations seems reasonable, we argue they are an I-O licensure facsimile of campaign promises where one is foolhardy if they believe regulation is the magic bullet. Each argument can be countered with significant evidence of potential pitfalls.

When looking at the three primary arguments for supporting licensure efforts, we examined the potential downstream effects of implementation and explored major concerns:

• • Licensure will help promote the status of the I-O profession. In general, this belief seems to be based on the notion that licensed professionals tend to hold a higher professional standing than those who do not. However, as a recent American Society of Association Executives study of licensure and certification (ASAE, 2014) notes, licensure is thought of by most professionals, including physicians and accountants, as a mere marker of “minimum proficiency” or “just competent” status. Moreover, most (67%) would argue it does more to deter future professionals from entering the profession. Unlike medicine or accounting, the I-O psychology profession is in its relatively early stages, with only recent gains in notoriety (BLS, 2014). If the objective is to deter potential candidates from seeking careers in I-O or to limit the growth of our profession, then licensure makes sense, but courts take a dim view of licensure boards that restrict entry into a field for the purpose of promoting their own profession (United States Supreme Court, 2014). Relying on licensure to increase the stature of our profession is seemingly misguided.

• • Oversight will differentiate I-O psychologists from other management consultants. This belief is rooted in the notion that consumers make decisions based on licensure. Although this may be true for professions like construction or massage therapy, there is abundant research pointing to other factors that are more critical when evaluating service professionals (Court, Elzinga, Mulder, & Vitvek, Reference Court, Elzinga, Mulder and Vitvek2009; Laja, Reference Laja2012). Consumers use prior experience (whether their own or that of another consumer) to help make decisions when assessing potential service contractors. This points to the importance of letting our work speak for itself. As I-O psychologists, we differentiate ourselves best when delivering high-quality outputs. This also speaks to concerns around differentiating ourselves from other types of professionals like HR, data scientists, or technologists. As Lyons, Mueller, Gruys, and Meyers (Reference Lyons, Mueller, Gruys and Meyers2012) point out, a risk behind licensure is creating an “alphabet soup” of credentials, where the meaningfulness and demand among public consumers is lost. The authors highlight numerous examples of other certifications or licenses that do little to differentiate their credential-holding professionals from other professionals.

• • Licensure will ensure that graduates from I-O programs meet a certain level of competence. Licensure provides many markers of basic-level proficiency, but should it be used as a barrier to entry for the I-O profession? Simply put, is there a compelling argument to take the responsibility of determining proficiency from our educational programs and give it to a licensing body? Would our members—the academic community responsible for the stewardship of our profession—be comfortable abdicating this role? As the LCIOP itself points out, educators have resisted licensure models that incorporate educational program accreditation. That means credentials reviews would fall to the regulatory boards, who can only do a cursory educational review even under the most well-funded licensure programs (see Rabben, Reference Rabben2013), and in fact the United States Customs and Immigration Services seems to dissuade credentialing boards from considering anything other than degree-level comparability in credentialing professionals (Matter of Shah, 17 I&N Dec. at 244 [Reg. Comm. 1977]). There is not a compelling reason from a student perspective, either. Years of research involving accreditation of educational programs points to the fact that educators and students alike prefer autonomy when conveying professional status, as long as a common standard is followed (Lockwood et al., Reference Laja2016).