The aim of this research is to investigate how key stakeholder groups involved with the certification of financial planners experience the phenomenon of the ‘professionalism of financial planners’. The study is to be carried out to provide insight to the international financial planning community in establishing relevant and superior professional standards for Certified Financial Planner (CFP) professionals. This will be a qualitative study using phenomenography as a research methodology to describe the qualitatively different ways in which certified financial planners, lecturers of the CFP curriculum and association managers understand or experience the phenomenon of ‘professionalism’. Research participants will be interviewed from the United States, Australia and Hong Kong and these interviews analysed to reveal the variations in the conceptions of ‘professionalism’ and the attributes that can be identified from the phenomenographic outcome space to inform financial planners, academics and professional associations of what is required to be a CFP professional.