Clinical PracticeVolume 1 · Issue 2

What We Owe the People We Serve

On competence as a moral obligation rather than a credentialing requirement.

Professor Cheryll Holmes, PhD, PsyD, MDR

Founder and Professor of Relationship Science and Human Functioning™

July 14, 2026

3 min readPractitioner

Cover plate reserved — Clinical Practice, Volume 1 · Issue 2

Clinical Practice

On competence as a moral obligation rather than a credentialing requirement.

People arrive to us at the worst hour of a long season. They rarely know what good care looks like, which means they cannot evaluate whether they are receiving it. That imbalance is the entire ethical weight of this profession.

“The person in front of you cannot tell whether you prepared. That is precisely why you must.”

Competence, then, is not a certificate on a wall. It is a promise made privately, renewed weekly, and kept when no one is watching.

References

References are recorded with the manuscript and published with the article.

Estimated citation

Holmes, C. (2026). What We Owe the People We Serve. Clinical Practice, 1(2). Holmes Knowledge Center, Holmes Training Academy™.

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About the author

Professor Cheryll Holmes, PhD, PsyD, MDR

Founder and Professor of Relationship Science and Human Functioning™

Professor Cheryll Holmes is the founder of The Holmes Organization and the architect of the Human Functioning™ framework. Her work sits deliberately at the convergence of science and theology: clinical evidence read with rigor, human beings read with dignity. She has spent her career preparing practitioners — clinicians, pastors, executives, and educators — to intervene with precision rather than instinct, and writes for the professional who must be right about a person's life, not merely persuasive about a topic.