Is Decency a trait?  Yes, it is.

 This article is ahead of its time and yet, perhaps not timely enough for what it's about to say. Also it is highly possible that it may be first and last article of this format and subject matter: an evaluation on considering whether or not decency or Decency on a measurement scale fits best with our scope and purpose of writing and making all such writing freely available.

Is it for ourselves or for our readers? Both? Perhaps not, but I would think it more along the lines as to "how can I help" question. If when specifically answering that question, we entertained a guideline that most of our writings are based on spontaneous ideas that we may think as both relevant and interesting to a larger audience - such consideration made a sufficient case or it has sufficient merit for continuing with our writing on these pages - however, recently it feels less urgent that a large audience of readership can benefit from our articles hence decency, becomes an ethical question in this case, here, I mean. Or rather pondering on scope at large, such an hesitation can only be applied to specific part - content that may be classed as less relevant at particular points in time.

All our ideas are beautifully developed - and not all inclusive of specific client material or cases and certainly not all about specific encounters. Things are much, much simpler:

I have an idea! Naturally I am told, it happens, most probably because, ultimately, various forms of acquired knowledge had been collated, evaluated, combined and assessed - several sources of information had reached an overload status over a significant period of time - interdisciplinary science and practice based knowledge that had been processed and tested against my experience and knowledge assessed against guidelines of good practice within my profession - if it is about a professional matter. And then yes, I have an idea! One morning, recently, when readapting best guidance policy for our practice - decency, as a point of reference came to mind. It felt quite obvious that any principle for good practice and when writing a guideline, would have letter of stone on decency - when I reformulated that idea, I've wondered if decency is a facet of one's character; than that followed on with a consideration on my knowledge and practice of individual differences including personality traits and eventually all questioning was rephrased as: "Is decency a trait"? Just so I can test further my thinking, I recalled various writings (science) on predictability of behaviour/conduct. When Googled such terms, most interestingly, my idea returned scholarly articles on decency and leadership (Hudson, 2020) the two concepts grouped together alongside IQ and EQ with Decency being suggested as a third measurable dimension when assessing leadership skills. But that is not all that I had in mind. I simply questioned if Decency is a stable, measurable characteristic, similar to concept of trait (personality) and not an attitude - much much debate on similarities and dissimilarities between traits and attitudes!

And, then, I realised that in practice terms, decency could be termed and determined against adherence to ethical conduct and good practice principles (to a larger extent exhibited behaviour, hence conduct and cognizant application of such ethical principles). At a personal level, decency is not so well nuanced - encounters with what could be termed as decency also have met with a (un) known deceit – all life experienced - and that created some really difficult feelings. At this point, creating a guideline that holds a question on nature of decency seems less and less plausible. As such it is decided that decency, conceptually, is a matter of self-interpretation of a situation or event.

For instance, my December 2020 blog offered readership possibility of feedback on blog aspect to the site and I had an overwhelming response as to how I should continue in offering the best there is as a form of support; two ways feedback on my practice with clients/patients is overwhelmingly positive and yet, I know that there is so much more that I want to do and accomplish.

Decency suggests humbleness and mentalising - I am absolutely certain that I am both humble and I practice mentalising when writing my blog - whether or not this had been a successfully synchronised project = remains to be seen.

Decency and leadership makes much sense because I can certainly relate to that entirely and positively in all that I hold as knowledge and experience - such examples are countless. Are there any situations when there is a need to be in a deeper reflection about it? Certainly, yes, if and when decency also means acknowledgement of being wrong sometimes, perhaps overly protective or reassessing a form of behaviour that has new knowledge to a previous interpretation. But I think that one of the most important aspect about decency and leadership is a capability of predicting future events and then preventatively acting on such knowledge - from my professional experience one example stands out most and it happened such a long time ago that it cannot be named.

I conclude that decency is in fact a characteristic of one‘s conduct that need to be measured against multiple environments, events and interactions - crossings between personal and professional - however, decency cannot be construed as an evidence base construct at one specific time, nor as an ultimate measurable, stable trait or characteristic of one’s form of conduct on a single point of view.

Writing this …and then questioning: is this writing decent enough to be published?

Answer: “,,, it feels like it falls short of in so many ways, and with that acknowledgement in mind, publishing this, it's perhaps the most decent thing to do, at least on my part .