When We Mistake Credentials for Competence

I spent a long time in the Army, and most of my adult life in a uniform of one type or another. I have many awards and decorations, including three combat patches from different special operations units, four bronze star medals, and seven combat stripes. I value those credentials and are grateful for the experiences that led to them. I also spent a long time in the classroom, both as a student and as an instructor. I have six college degrees, including one from Yale. I have a doctorate. I value education. In or out of uniform, credentials matter. But my own credentials are precisely why I am skeptical when institutions treat credentials–mine or anyone else’s–as proof of competence when they are, at best, merely potential evidence of it.

A degree only proves that someone satisfied the requirements of a degree program. A badge only proves that someone met a standard at a particular course at a particular time. A certification only establishes that someone, at some time, passed an assessment defined by a certifying body. A prestigious assignment only means that an organization selected a person for that specific assignment. These achievements can be meaningful. They often reflect intelligence, discipline, endurance, or skill. But they are proxies, and proxies become dangerous when we forget what they are standing in for.

The military is particularly vulnerable to credential inflation because it must make rapid judgments about large numbers of people, and there are a lot of things we can be credentialled for. Some of my awards and decorations were more or less participation trophies. That matters because uniforms and paper credentials become visual resumes. Tabs, badges, patches, schools, key-developmental positions, fellowships, advanced degrees, and previous units communicate a story before the person speaks. Some of that signaling is useful, because a qualification can tell everyone something about an individual’s training and experience. The problem begins when the signal replaces critical observation.

The civilian world does the same thing with university chair positions, professional licenses, job titles, and fashionable certifications. Hiring managers use credentials to reduce uncertainty. Promotion boards use them to compare files. Organizations defend decisions by pointing to formal qualifications. It is safer to select the person with the expected markers than to explain why someone without them is better suited to the work.

Over time, people adapt to the system. They collect qualifications not because the learning matters, but because the absence of the credential will be interpreted as a defect. Educational programs become boxes to check and, frankly, it’s just not that hard to rack up a bunch of academic qualifications, even at elite schools. Students learn what is required to pass, boards learn what they expect to see, and the institution gradually confuses successful navigation of its pathways with mastery of the profession.

This does not mean credentials are worthless. The alternative cannot be a culture in which expertise is replaced by charisma, personal connections, or loud confidence. Aviation, medicine, engineering, intelligence, law, and countless other fields require specialized knowledge that must be taught and tested. Standards protect institutions from wishful thinking. The answer is not fewer standards. It is greater honesty about what each standard actually demonstrates, and a recognition of the limits of the standard’s requirements.

There’s also a tendency to ascribe knowledge of Subject A because someone has solid creds in Subject B. I see this often in the veteran community. Your six months in Anbar as a first lieutenant don’t make you an expert on the entire Middle East, brother. Your DD-214 is not a doctorate in international relations.

Competence is far more important than credentialing, and competence can only really be revealed through performance in context. Can the person diagnose a problem that does not resemble the example in the textbook? Can they explain complex ideas clearly? Do they make sound judgments when information is incomplete? Can they translate expertise into action through other people? Do they learn from failure, update assumptions, and improve? Most importantly, can they produce results without leaving behind an organization that is weaker, less ethical, or more dependent on them?

Those questions are harder to score than credentials. They require leaders to observe, compare, and exercise judgment. They also create risk. If a leader promotes an unconventional candidate who fails, the choice may be criticized as irresponsible. If the leader selects the conventionally credentialed candidate who fails, the system absorbs the decision because it looked reasonable on paper.

There is also a humility problem. People understandably attach identity to achievements that demanded years of effort. A degree, tab, command, or fellowship becomes part of the story we tell about ourselves. When someone questions whether the credential guarantees competence, it can sound like an attack on the sacrifice required to earn it. But honoring effort does not require exaggerating what the achievement proves.

Organizations can correct this by treating credentials as the beginning of inquiry rather than the end. Ask what the person learned, how it changed their behavior, and whether they can apply it. Use work samples, realistic problems, repeated observation, and feedback from peers and subordinates. Distinguish between selection for an opportunity and success within it. Stop assuming that the absence of a familiar marker means the absence of ability.

Credentials matter. Education matters. I’m not saying it doesn’t. Schools, qualifications, and demanding assignments can transform people. I’m not saying they don’t. But the transformation is the point, not the line on the biography.

We mistook credentials for competence because credentials were easier to verify. The solution is not to sneer at achievement. It is to recover the professional courage to look beyond it.

_____________________________

Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.