Professionalism.

So I've been dealing with a lot of political pressure to conform at work lately and have even encountered an instance where speaking up about my concerns and frustrations led to me hearing that I "need to be more Professional." Regardless of the fact that my bringing up these issue was my way of acting professional and seeking collaboration from my seniors to resolve an inefficient control on both gossip in the workplace and important financial reporting concerns. For the first part of the week I was left to feel as though nothing I did for the organization was worth the effort... until 3:15 this afternoon.

For the past 13 months, I've been trying to uncover a reconciliation discrepancy that seemed to be hiding in the depths of electronic data compiled by the organization. To no avail, I continued to struggle through the frustration of feeling like I was missing pieces, or like those provided to me by others were of a lesser integrity. In strive to attain my goal of reconciling properly, I sought out the assistance of a CPA who participates in our firm's annual inside audits. She and I were able to work together and through the help of her excellent expertise, arrived at a solution for the problem - to alter the methods used at present time for reconciliations and realign them to actually balance each individual component of the fund accounting system.

Hooray! Tomorrow morning I get to show my effort was not in vain and that I do have some useful professional qualities, like collaboration, research, diligence, and a desire for fair and just reporting practices...

Yeah, I think I'll work on my "show you how professional I am" qualities instead.
If I could change one thing about the world today, it'd be the disrespect bestowed upon the little people in business. Without us, there would be no business.

"A general, raw view of professionalism is, 'a focused, accountable, confident, competent, motivation toward a particular goal, with respect for hierarchy and humanity, less the emotion'." (Compliments of Laurel of http://laureltarulli.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/what-is-professionalism/)