President's Message

Jeff Feuquay

The last time I wrote, I asked for your help in spreading the word about IPMAAC to your friends and colleagues - telling them first that we exist, then explaining who we are and what we are about. My focus was on the purpose of IPMAAC as stated in our by-laws. Paraphrasing and simplifying, IPMAAC exists to promote and advance personnel assessment practices and related policies, and its standing as a profession. To the many people spread the word and helped make Chicago so successful, thank you. But, don't stop with the end of the conference; go forth and multiply.

Our bylaws also say that one of our purposes is "[t]o define professional standards for public personnel assessment." (Article II, ¶ 4) That paragraph can lead to some fairly thorny issues, and from time to time, our commitment to defining professional standards comes under fire. Board members and IPMA staff receive requests that we endorse a particular theory or posture. We also receive criticism for having allowed speakers with non-mainstream views or theories to speak at our conferences.

Just as most citizens (with the possible exception of CPA's) agree that the U.S. Tax Code is too complex, so the IPMAAC Board is in virtually complete agreement on the "big picture." in personnel assessment. But to actually revise the tax code, our elected officials must address issues of national policy -- who is harmed and helped by any proposed revisions must be examined in the light of who should be harmed and helped, assuming value-neutral changes are unlikely if not impossible. We personnel assessment folks are "fortunate" in that national policy for our field is already defined in myriad places -- federal and state law, public agency rules and interpretive memos, and thousands of major and minor court decisions. We may agree with or rail against those public policies, and they are far from immutable, but we affect them only with our votes and our arguments in the various courts.

So, what does it mean for us to define professional standards? Speaking for myself, not the Board, I am of the opinion that there's much more to our jobs and to defining professional standards than just developing practices, techniques and procedures that assess individuals consistent with the established law of the land that. Many of us are psychologists who ascribe to and will be judged against certain nationally and state-defined ethical principles. While those principles are generally lengthy and may vary some from state to state, a very brief summary of some pertinent and common components derived from the APA Ethical Principles is worthwhile.

When we design, standardize, validate, reduce or eliminate bias and use assessment procedures, and in all our professional endeavors, we are to rely on scientifically and professionally derived knowledge, knowledge that we have kept current. We are to respect individual differences and the rights of others to hold values, attitudes and opinions that differ from our own. We are not to engage in unfair discrimination on any basis proscribed by law, and we are to identify when particular assessment techniques may by inapplicable or inappropriate due to gender, age, race, ethnicity, national origin or other status-based criteria. We are to minimize any unavoidable harm to those with whom we work. Any evaluative statements we make about people are to be based on information sufficient to substantiate our findings. We are not to misuse assessment techniques and we are to take steps to prevent misuse by others, including apprising users of factors that may affect the accuracy our results.

I hope that we will continue to receive requests for IPMAAC to support certain ideas; we exist, in part, to define professional standards. But, I also hope that we continue to allow and accept dissension in our ranks, allow other professionals to present new (or old) ideas that differ from our own consistent with the above principles. Both are hallmarks of professionals.