As an architect (buildings, not software) I can say that there are both many highly capable people who are not licensed, and many poor practitioners who are lic

As an architect (buildings, not software) I can say that there are both many highly capable people who are not licensed, and many poor practitioners who are licensed architects. I couldn't be sure if this was the same for lawyers/doctors/engineers etc. My guess is that it is probably similar for lawyers but less true for others.... I believe in private accreditation (in computers this is already common for some jobs, through accreditors like Microsoft, Cisco, etc.) and letting end clients make their own judgements as to whether private accreditation is necessary for their choice of professional. I do not believe in public accreditation, which is often a single-system for diverse fields (eg. architecture) and actually limits people from calling themselves by a commonly known job title (eg. you cant call yourself an 'architect' unless you pass this single [often poor] accreditation procedure).