I hear endeavour just as a formal way of saying try. So try, plus trying to impress with formality, is to put up a bit of a screen, which is how I went on to consider “professionalism” and what that means to us, the connotations it has.

“make it my duty to be professionally competent” does sound a lot better. But still the questions remain. Just saying you work to an ethical code is professionalism in action.

An ethical code I would say is more concrete, and more useful to the client as a basis to make complaints, this creed seems to me to be aimed more at counsellors to clarify the spirit of what they are doing…

being a bit of a word fanatic (i guess the importance of language is one of MY values :) may i point out that the word endeavor doesn’t really mean “trying” in the sense of “ok, mom, i’ll try to be home on time”. the word “endevor” is often seen as “attempt”, but in the sense of “making an earnest attempt”. taking it from its word origin, it means, “to make it one’s duty”.

so how does this sound: “… and will make it my duty to be professionally competent at all times”?

what would you say is the difference between an ethical code and this counsellors creed?