@ArthurMcB and
@Purple:
I think you both don't get or don't want to accept the difference between physical/functional competence and authoritative competence.
None of them are required to be part of a professional body.
Capacity to do certain jobs is not in itself enough to even
get the job, let alone be allowed to discharge it continually.
Look at professional job ads. Engineers are expected to be members of the relevant institute for their discipline (IEEE, IMechE, ICE, etc) and normally Chartered Engineers (C.Eng.) too. Depending on the job concerned this stipulation may be from the agency hiring, the employer, the employer's client where it's a contract job, the state in which the work is done or whatever. I see similar requirements on professional qualifications for accountants. Sure, they don't say explicitly that your ACA/ACCA/etc membership
must be current. But maybe they assume that. And maybe the hiring company will check that anyhow. And no doubt exclude those whose registered status has been lost due to years long non-payment of annual fees.
In the case of the accountant there'll be an external auditor which will be checking their work anyway, just as bodies such as the NSAI audit quality standards.
Employers may well often want their own accountants to be qualified to CPU/ACCA/ACA/CIMA standard anyway. Yes, the accounts maintenance might well be done by people qualified to accounting technician status. But other aspects of financial management may be beyond their scope, let alone the desire of senior management to allow them to attempt them.
As an engineer I can say with confidence that for amoral as well as moral reasons that nobody without the proper qualifications and institute memberships/chartered status/etc would be taken into a position of quality responsibility in a medical device manufacturing plant. NASI auditing quality standards isn't much use if piles of individually expensive artificial knees have been churned out and passed quality checks in the meantime: the potential financial loss is too high.
You mention the obligation of professionals to both familiarise themselves with updated standards and practices and do their quota of CPE. This is doable by individuals on their own. But CPE courses are far more economic to the individual were it organised en bloc through say a professional body. $636 a year might not buy the individual professional much CPE for the year. But it would buy a lot of CPE if a selection of courses were available on a block booking basis arranged by a pro body.
There is a note of rage in your responses. Perhaps it's time you discussed this face to face with people in your own profession. I cannot say to either of you that you challenge the professional body you belong to - that's a personal decision affected by many personal factors and evaluations. But it is time you made up your own mind about better alternatives to what you see as an imposition. I say this as someone who dumped my own (notoriously corrupt) pro body 30 years ago.