BY ANTHONY LUIZZO AND JOHN M. GASPAR
Much has been written about the pros and cons of joining professional organizations. An excellent article in UMass Global, a nonprofit affiliate of the University of Massachusetts, defines an organization / association as groups of people from the same industry or profession gathered to represent the industry or profession.
The article goes on to mention that oftentimes these groups help to champion new standards within the profession as well as being key advocates for or against municipal legislation affecting the industry at large.
Whether one comes from the law enforcement, private security or business sectors, the investigative skills learned help form the sum and substance of the professional's toolkit. Upon our retirement from law enforcement, both authors of this article opened investigative firms and applied for an investigative license. As small to moderate investigative company owners, we needed to find a path forward to hone our skills and grow our businesses. As we entered the profession of private business, we reached out to organizations that we believed could help us to grow and prosper. Like the medical profession, we learned that there are many investigative specialties that we could pursue.
However, to achieve specialty status we needed credentialing which was only available via private corporate entities such as the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). These organizations offered courses of study to be- come credentialed experts. ASIS offers the Certified Protection Professional certification (CPP), and the ACFE offers the Certified Fraud Examiner certification (CFE), Intellenet Board Accredited Investigator (BAI) founded by Harvey Morse and Ar Morse to name a few. Beyond getting credentialed and ac- credited, we realized that we also needed to join investigative organizations to share expertise with other professionals.