Limitations of standards and professional guidance

Guidance and associated process frameworks developed and promoted by professional organizations have an important role to play in the development of accepted good practice, if not ‘best practice’, for a number of reasons. For example, the preparation of guides and standards can bring together experts with different experience, and synthesize that experience in a unique way, and they can tailor completely general common practice approaches to particular types of context, which facilitates constructive detail. However, such process frameworks, and the process of their development, have important limitations that need to be understood. In some cases – for standards in particular – the need for consensus can limit both the scope and detail of ....