The last chapter (Identifying diverse sources of expertise) discussed how a democratic professional can acknowledge and understand different sources of knowledge, skills and expertise. This may result in the identification of many different publics, which public services have to serve. Valuing diverse forms of expertise has to be informed by a sense of respect which will inform any action taken. Respecting services users by listening, supporting, empowering and ultimately working towards greater equality and mutual understanding has to be a central function of democratic professionals, but this will depend on developing different ways of working with service users.

Respecting services users is closely related to acting with integrity. Mayer (1995) identified integrity as a component of trust. Democratic professionals will have to have a self-awareness of their own values, prejudices, beliefs, limitations and fallibility (Taubman, 2013), which involves extensive reflection on professional practice and honesty about professional limitations. It highlights some of the tensions that public professionals operating within public sector reforms will experience when their professional judgement is challenged by a management agenda.

Even before the introduction of management driven systems, public professionals had been questioning their own judgements in relation to the needs of their clients and patients, for example, nurses questioning the power relationships between doctors, nurses and patients. Matthew Pianalto (2012) in ‘Integrity and Struggle’ in the journal Philosophia developed the concept of practical integrity, which he defined as for those who “must confront, manage and control factors that give rise to various kinds of inner conflict” (Pianalto, 2012: 335). This sums up some of the conflicts that democratic professionals may experience, which emerge when trying to operate with integrity. These are not easy processes to deal with at any time but during a period when budgets for public services are being reduced and cost-reduction drives new approaches, they provide profound professional challenges.

The terms respect, integrity and trust feature strongly in attempts to improve governance in public services, for example, the Code of Practice for the General Social Care Council (2010) which includes “respect the rights of services users whilst seeking to ensure that their behaviour does not harm themselves or other people”. There is much more widespread questioning of the integrity of public professionals as a result of public sector reforms.