
3 minute read
Understanding your bounds of
Understanding your bounds of competence
MARTIN PRATCHETT MEngNZ
Advertisement
The Chartered Professional Engineer mark relies heavily upon an engineer’s understanding and staying within their bounds of competence. But how do you know what you don’t know?
Competence refers to the knowledge, skills and attributes required for a person to undertake their work successfully. Knowing the bounds of your own, or another person’s, competence can affect the performance or success of an activity or task. Our work is growing increasingly complex, multidisciplinary and specialised. We need to be able to learn new skills, change how we do things and solve problems we didn’t originally train for.
When we say an engineer is competent, we’re making an inference from the information we have about their current or past performance to an expectation of future performance. That inference relates to a range of possible future scenarios.
We have the competence required to do our work most of the time, but we need to know our bounds of competence. People have four layers of competence awareness.
Unconsciously incompetent – people don’t know what they don’t know. Research has shown some people have a cognitive bias where they overestimate their ability.
Consciously incompetent – people know what they don’t know, the boundaries of their competence and potential danger spots.
Consciously competent – people know their competence, strengths and areas where they need to utilise others’ expertise.
Unconsciously competent – experts. Often highly competent and specialised, they present to others, lead professional changes, solve tricky issues and conduct peer reviews. They’re often called on in emergencies, trusted to advise quickly and accurately.
There are different ways engineers identify their competence and assess their limits and those of others in their team. One way is using a competence framework or model. These are explicit about the specific knowledge, skills and behaviours that need to be demonstrated for a role and the level to demonstrate (entry, competent or expert) within each competency. This means the frameworks and models can be used to identify what’s required to perform in a particular role and they underpin high-performing teams.
Engineers working outside any formal competency framework can develop their processes and approach to knowing and staying within their competence level.
Here is a high-level process to follow: 1. Reflect on the type of work you do, and want to do, and the changes and innovation in the profession. 2. List the relevant competencies – present and future. — Review publicly available competency frameworks similar to your discipline or role. Look at contracts, procurement documents, legislation, rules, materials, reviews and recommendations. — Ask people you see as experts in the discipline. — Don’t just think of your technical areas.
Familiarise yourself with the attributes of a modern leader. — Look at the Bodies of Knowledge (BoKS) for your discipline and see where your knowledge gaps may be. 3. Assess where you think you are for each competency – entry-level, competent or expert? Think of the mistakes you’ve made and lessons learnt. Ask for open, honest feedback from those who know your work. 4. Plan how you will develop your competency gaps, for example: — researching a topic — learning from an expert/mentoring programme — attending a course — joining a special interest group so you can build your networks and find out how others approach similar problems — practising activities and tasks, such as shadowing an expert, and getting your work reviewed. 5. Keep evidence of your ongoing learning and achievement – have regular checkins to get feedback on your progress.
There’s an increased specialisation of engineers and we’re expected to work to the highest standards and outcomes. We need to clearly communicate our knowledge, skills and attributes, plus those we're developing and how we contribute to the overall performance and success of any activity. Read the full version of this article at engineeringnz.org
Martin Pratchett MEngNZ is Engineering Practice Leader at Te Ao Rangahau.