Published on: November 4, 2026
An ATIXA Tip of the Week by Joseph Vincent, M.L.S.
The longer you work in a highly specialized field with complex responsibilities, the more your resourcefulness, judgment, and decision-making develop into expertise. You get better at making the right calls for each situation at hand.
Expertise also means seeing beyond that immediate decision: recognizing what could go wrong, anticipating consequences, and knowing when you need more information or another perspective. TNG supports thousands of client requests for assistance with response and resolution each year. When we are involved from the outset, we can help roadmap the process before complications arise. When we’re only called halfway through, resolving problems often takes longer and becomes more complex. That’s not because consultants are smarter than school-based practitioners, or because practitioners are less capable, but it’s more because we see hundreds and hundreds of complaints a year, while some of our clients may barely see a handful or a dozen. We recognize patterns and track case law in ways that most of our clients cannot. Our expertise is complementary, and the work is stronger when we are humble enough to rely on one another.
It’s surprisingly easy to underestimate the gap between knowledge and expertise. When my dishwasher broke, I researched the problem, watched tutorials, consulted a local technician, and determined that I could fix it myself. I knew my independent research was no substitute for training, but somewhere between diagnosing the problem and finding the replacement part, I had convinced myself I knew enough.
What I didn’t know was whether I could avoid making things worse. Without the experience of a technician, who does this type of job with enough repetition that they’ve learned what to watch out for, I don’t know answers to questions like which parts manufacturers are most reliable, which tools are ideal for the actual replacement process, what parts of the machine tend to break most easily during installation, what tricks you can’t find in instruction manuals, or what common pitfalls routinely plague this kind of procedure.
Title IX work is no different. Intelligence, good judgment, and good intentions all matter. So do curiosity and the willingness to do your homework. But nothing replaces specialized training and experience, which equip you to discern what a decision may set in motion, what you may be overlooking, and when the smartest decision is to seek expertise beyond your own. Our clients know their policies and the applicable regulations. We know what the regulations don’t tell you, and how to navigate policies that cannot possibly answer every question a practitioner will have.
Another trap that comes with expertise: assuming it transfers. Even if I had successfully repaired my dishwasher, I wouldn’t be qualified to repair my sink drain. The same goes for areas closely related to Title IX, like Title VII, ADA/504, or Title VI compliance. Expertise in one certainly helps, but it doesn’t automatically make you an expert in the other.
Smart People Still Need Specialized Training
Institutions too often assume that because someone is smart, experienced, or successful in a related role, they can step into Title IX work and make sound decisions without specialized training. That assumption exposes the institution to risk.
Without sufficient training and experience, practitioners may not know what they don’t know. Our firm routinely engages with thousands of professionals in the Title IX field. Just based on their questions, we can instantly tell whether they’ve been trained by ATIXA or not. It’s that obvious. A decision can feel reasonable, measured, and fair while still creating costly inefficiencies, harmful precedents, legal exposure, procedural complications, unnecessary delay, or avoidable harm.
Good intentions don’t protect an institution from the consequences of a poorly informed decision. Well-meaning professionals can make risky Title IX decisions that erode trust and make an already difficult situation harder to resolve.
The challenge is recognizing when a knowledge or experience gap is affecting the work before it becomes a larger problem. Here are some red flags that signal an institution or professional needs more training or expert guidance.
RED FLAG: Policy Gaps Go Unrecognized
A policy must hold up under real-world circumstances. A policy that is incomplete, imprecise, outdated, or too narrow, coupled with a failure to identify those gaps, make necessary revisions, and keep pace with developing legal and regulatory guidance, can create avoidable complications. For example, consider this real-life example of an institution’s entire policy definition of sexual assault:
Sexual Assault, defined as any sexual act directed against another person without the consent of the Complainant, including instances in which the Complainant is incapable of giving consent.
You either immediately identified the deficiency here, or you didn’t. If you didn’t, give us a call. If you did, you’re well trained and have a keen eye, but keep at it!
There is always more to learn. Want to test yourself again on a slightly tougher question? Consider this definition:
Sexual Harassment, defined as unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex determined by a reasonable person to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to an educational institution’s program or activity.
Which elements are objective, which are subjective, which are both, and which are neither? Got it? If not, train with us!
Often, vulnerabilities in policy or understanding go unrecognized until a complex complaint exposes them. Experienced Title IX practitioners know how to identify policy limitations before they are required by law or become consequential. The red flag isn’t simply that something went wrong; it’s that the institution lacked the expertise to recognize the risk in advance.
RED FLAG: Uncertainty Becomes Inaction
Too many Title IX professionals think training is about compliance. It is, of course, but ATIXA training is also about office management, institutional politics, authority, and navigating across different departments and divisions. Most trainings focus on what to do, but not the how or the why that underpins most of the mandates that wind up in institutional policies. When you don’t understand where those mandates came from, why they’re there, or what they’re supposed to accomplish, you’ll find yourself at a loss when the correct course of action isn’t explicitly spelled out in the policy.
Well-trained Title IX practitioners are better equipped to navigate uncertainty about authority, obligations, alternatives, or the consequences of action versus inaction, particularly when a matter is complicated, unfamiliar, or likely to generate controversy. Without that foundation, hesitation can lead to extended delays or a tendency to favor smaller, slower, or less decisive action in hopes of minimizing disruption. Expertise doesn’t necessarily make difficult decisions easier. But it does give professionals the framework and confidence to make them when they count.
RED FLAG: A Legal Process Outpaces the Institution
When an external legal process concludes more quickly than an institution’s response, that disparity warrants attention. Criminal and civil proceedings operate under different standards, serve different purposes, and should not dictate an institutional outcome. Still, when an outside process has investigated, developed evidence, or even reached a conclusion while the institution remains stalled, something is wrong. That experience used to be a bit of a unicorn. It’s becoming more common now, and it should have us concerned. The wheels of criminal justice have always turned slowly, but the college and school resolution wheels have always been faster, until now. If we can’t beat a turtle in this race, why are we even in it?
Difficult situations rarely improve when an institution waits to address them. Delays, more likely than not, compound a problem, frustrate the parties, and undermine confidence in the process, leaving the institution struggling to explain why it failed to act more promptly. The question isn’t whether the institution should have reached the same result as the external process. The question is why the institution’s process has not progressed and whether the gaps in the practitioner’s training or experience contributed to the delay. We have long asked how a campus or school resolution might affect an eventual criminal trial. Now, we’re asking for the first time how a criminal verdict should impact the college or school’s outcome. That’s quite a question. Even having to ask it is disconcerting.
GREEN FLAG: Knowing When Expertise Matters
Institutions should foster cultures in which seeking another perspective, more guidance, or consulting support is understood as sound professional judgment, not an admission of inadequacy.
If you’re wondering whether I still have a broken dishwasher, I don’t. I knew enough to know when my knowledge had reached its limit. I called someone who had repaired my exact model dozens of times, and both my dishwasher and my ego survived the experience. Title IX work requires that same humility when the stakes are this high.
For especially complex dishwasher repairs (that is, Title IX guidance), reach out to our TNG consulting team at inquiry@tngconsulting.com.
And to continue developing your own expertise, download ATIXA’s course calendar.