As a purchaser of coaching services – how do you decide whether someone is a good coach or not? If I move house and want a good GP, I make sure my new GP went to medical school. If I want a good lawyer, I check candidates to make sure they went to a reputable university. If I want a good architect, again I want to know they are properly qualified. The GP, the lawyer and the architect all belong to professions, and they all start their professional journey by attaining a university qualification. By contrast, coaching is not a profession and coaches are not required to go to university. Instead, there have emerged various coaching bodies, industry associations with their own systems of accreditation. Most accreditation systems are based on the evaluation of competence, an approach we will argue has serious limitations. In this paper we will review some of those limitations before offering up ideas as to what else we can do to make good hiring decisions.