In this opinion piece, accountant and columnist Gene Marks argues that professional continuing education requirements, which he must fulfil as a certified public accountant, should be expanded to include formal etiquette training alongside the usual technical and ethics courses. He was prompted by a report on a venture capital firm running an "etiquette finishing school" for startup founders, teaching them how to dress, socialise and eat caviar, but Marks argues this narrow, upper-class version of etiquette misses the point of what modern workplaces actually need.

Marks contends that true etiquette, defined as the norms governing how people treat one another, has become an essential management skill given how diverse the American workforce has grown across race, religion, politics and generations, with women making up roughly half the workforce and up to four generations working side by side. He argues managers need to be equally skilled in respecting cultural, religious and political differences as in their technical roles, and proposes that the millions of professionals already required to take continuing education should have proper etiquette training added to their requirements, not to make people nicer but to make them easier to work with and more productive.