Over the past six months, i've found myself in the middle of at least five different debates on whether you and your colleagues are members of a true profession, which may explain why I'm starting to find it interesting. One of the most provocative? An "Under the Trees" discussion at the FPA Retreat in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in early June came to a few conclusions that may alarm you.

Let's start by defining our terms. Most of us, when we talk about a profession, simply refer to doctors, lawyers or accountants, without actually getting into the details of what separates them from plumbers, cosmetologists or (somewhere near the bottom of the barrel) writers of financial columns. But what do we mean when we say that planning is a profession like those others?

Planners Or Plumbers? 

Rick Kahler, owner of Kahler Financial in Rapid City, S.D., suggests that one distinction is that professionals sell advice, wisdom and knowledge. On the other hand, plumbing or roof repair, though very demanding, tend to be more in the nature of crafts or trades. I think most of us would agree that financial planning meets this basic test.

From there, the conversation goes downhill fast. In the roundtable, several advisors suggested, in one way or another, that every profession has to have some recognized, enforceable form of (state, federal or highly organized internal) regulation. Alas, planning doesn't even come close to meeting this standard. Among all the self-regulatory organizations, and federal and state regulators who look over the shoulders of financial service providers, there are zero regulations that relate directly to your planning work. All of the regulatory attention is focused on the investment and product-related advice you give out.

Worse, there's no sign that this problem will be fixed anywhere in the near future, since there is no consensus on how to create a regulatory scheme—or even on whether such a scheme is desirable. Will advisors get behind new forms of oversight that legitimize, but also encumber, their planning recommendations?

My sense is that we're 10 years away from meeting a uniform standard. Or, alternatively, in a few years the government will impose some kind of sales-related standard that strangles the emergent profession in its cradle and resolves this debate once and for all.

Education and Ethics

Another criterion that is usually mentioned is a required level of education for all practitioners. From here, the discussion can go in a variety of directions. For one, all the professions I know are based on a university degree, not a certificate program as the CFP is currently. Yes, there are planning curricula at some 250 colleges and universities, some of them quite good. But the profession has precious few degree programs. And the transition from certificate to college degree seems unlikely to change so long as the CFP board is the coordinator of college programs.

Members of a real, established profession should have to master a body of professional knowledge that is dramatically beyond the general public's knowledge of the subject. Think of doctors and their understanding of the human body, or accountants' knowledge of tax law. Again, planning seems to come up short. Estate and tax planning can be kind of complicated, but attorneys and tax accountants are the primary experts in those fields. Retirement planning requires mastery of a spreadsheet or a piece of software. I suspect most of you have worked with clients who know as much about investing or retirement planning as the advisor down the street.

This, at least, seems to be changing somewhat. Younger, university-educated advisors come into the profession with a technical background that far surpasses what most advisors brought to the profession. In fact, the newest job position at larger financial planning firms is what Michael Kitces, director of financial planning for Pinnacle Advisory Group in Columbia, Md., half-mockingly calls "the resident geek." Within 10 years, most advisors will have expertise. Let's give this criterion a grade of "incomplete."

Of course, every professional needs to be able to apply that knowledge to real-world situations, which suggests another characteristic of established professions. Doctors, lawyers and CPAs have to go through a recognized apprenticeship period, where the would-be professional serves as a junior partner in the law firm, enters a residency at the hospital or works as a junior auditor at a Big 4 firm. None of these professionals-in-training would think of doing unsupervised client work until they've put in a requisite amount of apprenticeship time and are judged ready.

Financial planners may evolve to something similar in the future, but for now, we fail the test. True, the CFP board does require those who pass its exam to get a few years of experience before using the mark. But this requirement can be met by hanging out a shingle and jumping right into client situations, doing untold damage along the way.