Are you credible enough?

In accountancy, as in many professions, credibility is often associated with confidence, authority and executive presence. These qualities matter – but they only tell part of the story. There is a different and more nuanced picture of highly skilled professionals whose credibility is being quietly undermined, not by a lack of competence but by a pattern of behaviour that makes their competence harder for others to see. I call this the credibility gap.

Credibility gap

The credibility gap is the distance between how others currently perceive you and how you need to be perceived in order to have the professional impact your role demands.

Consider a familiar scenario: you have reviewed the data carefully, reached a sound conclusion and prepared a clear recommendation for your peers. You walk into the meeting knowing what you think. Then a senior colleague offers a different view, and almost immediately you begin to question your own.

By the time it is your turn to speak, the conclusion itself has not changed, but your delivery has. You add caveats you do not really need. You modify the strength of your recommendation. You watch faces around the table, reading for approval, resistance or discomfort before you fully commit to your position.

Your original recommendation has not changed. But other people do not see the full strength of your thinking or your conviction; they see the edited, diluted version that appears when you’re under pressure.

There are hundreds of moments like this in any one day in which credibility is strengthened or weakened. Each one may seem unremarkable in isolation. Cumulatively, however, they shape how colleagues, clients and senior leaders form their impression of your judgment, your confidence and your authority. The credibility gap widens not because you are less competent but because your competence is not visible.

Empathy factor

Empathic professionals are particularly affected. Empathy is a genuinely valuable professional skill; empathic people are adept at building trust with clients and sensing what others need before it is stated. In accountancy, these qualities support strong client relationships, effective team working and sound advisory work.

But when empathy tips into overdrive, it can begin to work against the person who has it. Highly empathic professionals process a great deal of interpersonal information in real time. They notice micro-expressions, register shifts in the atmosphere of a room and pick up on the emotional undercurrents that others miss entirely.

Empathy becomes a liability, however, when it begins to redirect attention away from the individual’s own thinking and towards managing the reactions of others. In practice, this might mean softening a well-reasoned point because someone looks uncomfortable, holding back a useful observation to preserve harmony or waiting for a pause that never comes until the moment has passed.

So, while the underlying capability remains unchanged, it is not expressed in a way that others can readily observe. Over time, that gap between who you are and how you are seen begins to grow.

The seven levers

You can, however, work to close the credibility gap using what I refer to as the seven credibility levers. These are specific areas of leadership behaviours where credibility is most readily strengthened or diluted. These are not rules for how to become someone different; they are guidelines for self-reflection – invitations to notice where your value is fully visible and where it may be obscured.

Work through them with these questions in mind: Where am I strong? Where might I be giving ground without realising it?

1. Boundaries. How consistently do you push back when needed, without second-guessing yourself afterwards?
2. Voice. How often do you say what you mean clearly, without softening your point or adding unnecessary caveats?
3. Presence. How consistently do you stay engaged and visible in professional conversations, even when there’s tension or someone talks over you?
4. Recognition. How comfortably do you receive credit for your work, without deflecting praise or instinctively minimising your contribution?
5. Authority. How firmly do you hold your professional judgments, particularly when they are challenged or questioned?
6. Responsibility. How readily do you take on other people’s problems as if they were yours to solve? What does that cost you in terms of how your own role and contribution are perceived?
7. Judgment. How well do you remain anchored in your own thinking when others offer competing opinions or critical feedback?

Begin to work on just one of these levers initially and notice the positive impact it can have.

Being seen as more credible does not require you to change who you are. It requires something more precise: becoming more deliberate about how your competence is expressed in every given moment.

For professionals whose empathy is one of their genuine strengths, the task is to ensure that concern for others does not routinely override the observable expression of your own insight, judgment and authority. Empathy and credibility are not in opposition; when the balance is right, each strengthens the other. That balance is available to you. You do not have to change who you are to find it.