The first is simply wrong-headed. The second is absolutely the job of FPA and/or everyone else who steps up as a leader of this profession, except CFP Board.

Practitioners do the first by proxy. To assert public protection as a CFP Board mission gets us back to that expansionist agenda and a reality check. After 30 years, we CFP® mark holders are less than 10% of America's ostensible financial advisors. CFP Board has no army or police force. "Protection?" Please. Reality controls, not CFP Board.

The second is wholly inappropriate to a regulator/standards setter. Regulate us. That's all. Give our marks meaning. That's enough.

CFP Board must support and maintain strong standards and practices, above all and at all costs. If CFP Board does this, folks will come to CFP Board. The big institutions will come to CFP Board. The world will come to CFP Board in gratitude that CFP Board has brought unassailable standards and integrity into a financial world too often woefully bereft of either. Don't sweat the small stuff. Test for that which can be tested and have the greatest expectations for that which cannot.

Accordingly, I suggest that CFP Board's mission should be simply to bring meaning and value to the CFP® marks through the recognition, creation and enforcement of standards and practices. Others will worry about education, theory, career path, public perception, legislation, promotion, etc. Just make sure our profession has room to breathe and grow. Establish competency and integrity as norms. Continually reinforce and communicate them. Take care of the fighters, robbers and cheaters. Then, get out of the way. The rest of us can handle it.

At the end of the day CFP Board has only one thing it can control, and that one thing is the CFP trademark in all of its glorious iterations.

And the purpose of the mark?

The purpose should be nothing more and nothing less than to validate to the world that those using it have met and maintained certain standards and complied with certain appropriate practices. Anything outside of "standards" or "practices" inherently should be outside CFP Board's purview.

The issues are minimum competency and integrity, regardless of business model. This is an authentic profession. Demand markholders honor that even if others do not.

This is the biggest of deals. For standards validation to be meaningful, this validation must rest on bedrock. Any deviation from bedrock reduces the validation's intensity, meaning and quality. That means that those sporting the CFP® credential ought to personally reflect CFP® aspirations, not be hustled into a "big tent." Those falling short are not welcome. The public ought not to need "protecting" from the likes of us. Rather, the likes of us ought to imbue the CFP® marks with meaning. That means CFP Board ought to trust most of us most of the time.

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