Cultural competence and cultural humility are often presented as rivals, one old and one new. In social work they now stand side by side. Competence is what you know and can do across cultures; humility is how you hold that knowledge: as a starting point, checked against the person in front of you, with an eye on the power you bring into the room.
Below are where each idea came from, what the NASW Code of Ethics and CSWE's accreditation standards now say, why the profession asks for both, and how the ASWB exam tests the stance without ever using the word.
The short version
| Cultural competence | Cultural humility | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Knowledge, skills, attitudes and policies for working across cultures | A lifelong stance of self-reflection, learning from the client, and attention to power |
| Focus | What the worker or agency knows and does | The worker's own assumptions and the relationship |
| Where it goes wrong alone | A checklist of traits that turns into stereotyping | "Not knowing" used as a reason not to learn |
| Where it appears | Cross et al. (1989); NASW's 2015 standards; the title of NASW standard 1.05 | Tervalon and Murray-García (1998); NASW 1.05(c) since 2021; CSWE's 2022 standards |
Where the ideas came from
Cultural competence took its best-known definition from a 1989 monograph for children's mental health services, Towards a Culturally Competent System of Care, by Terry Cross and colleagues: "Cultural competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enable that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations." Note that the definition is about systems and agencies as much as individual workers.
Cultural humility came nine years later, as a critique. In 1998 Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-García, writing about training doctors, argued that the traditional idea of competence, "a detached mastery of a theoretically finite body of knowledge," was the wrong goal for this kind of learning. They proposed humility instead: "a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the patient-physician dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and nonpaternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships with communities."
Their three parts are worth remembering separately: look at yourself, look at the power difference, and work with communities, not just individuals.
What social work's codes say now
The NASW Code of Ethics changed in 2021. Before that revision, standard 1.05 was titled Cultural Awareness and Social Diversity and asked social workers to understand culture, to have a knowledge base of their clients' cultures, and to understand diversity and oppression. The word humility did not appear.
The 2021 revision retitled it Cultural Competence, and two of its changes matter most here. Social workers "must take action against oppression, racism, discrimination, and inequities, and acknowledge personal privilege." And a new paragraph, 1.05(c), reads:
"Social workers should demonstrate awareness and cultural humility by engaging in critical self-reflection (understanding their own bias and engaging in self-correction), recognizing clients as experts of their own culture, committing to lifelong learning, and holding institutions accountable for advancing cultural humility."
So the Code keeps the word competence in the title and puts humility inside it. CSWE's 2022 accreditation standards, which shape every accredited BSW and MSW program, do the same in Competency 3, on anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion. One of its two practice behaviors asks social workers to "demonstrate cultural humility by applying critical reflection, self-awareness, and self-regulation to manage the influence of bias, power, privilege, and values in working with clients and constituencies, acknowledging them as experts of their own lived experiences."
NASW's 2015 Standards and Indicators for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice remain the profession's detailed guide to the competence side, and they are on ASWB's 2026 reference lists.
Why social work asks for both
Each idea fixes the other's weak spot.
- Competence without humility stereotypes. Knowing how a community tends to make decisions, understand illness or view outside help is useful as a first guess. Applied to a client without asking, it becomes a stereotype with a credential behind it.
- Humility without competence puts the work on the client. A worker who knows nothing about a community's history with services, or its common family structures, makes the client teach them everything, often while the client is in crisis.
- Together they work. Learn what you can about the groups you serve, hold it as a hypothesis, and let the person correct it. Then look past the individual: humility in the NASW sense includes holding your own agency to account for its hours, its forms, its language access and who it hires.
Neighboring terms
Several other phrases circle the same ground, and exam options use them:
- Cultural awareness: recognizing that cultural differences exist and matter, starting with your own culture.
- Cultural sensitivity: responding to differences respectfully and avoiding offense. Useful, but it says little about knowledge or power.
- Cultural responsiveness: adapting services, methods and settings to fit the people being served.
- Anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice: adds the duty to challenge the structures that disadvantage clients, not only to relate to clients well. The Code's line that social workers "must take action against oppression, racism, discrimination, and inequities" is this idea in ethical form.
- Intersectionality: the term Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced in a 1989 law review article on discrimination cases in which courts would not recognize claims by Black women that combined race and sex. Identities interact, and treating them one at a time misses the experience of the whole person. The 2026 ASWB outlines name it explicitly.
What it looks like in practice
The stance shows up in small habits more than in grand statements:
- Ask about meaning before you plan. "What do you call this problem? What do you think caused it? What has helped before? Who else should be part of the decision?"
- Treat general knowledge as a question, not an answer. "Some families in your community prefer to decide this together. Is that true for you?"
- Notice your reactions. Surprise, discomfort or certainty about a client's culture are signals to examine, often in supervision.
- Name the power difference. You may control access to services, write reports or make referrals the client cannot refuse. Saying so plainly is part of an honest relationship.
- Use qualified interpreters. A family member, and especially a child, should not carry sensitive conversations for a client who needs language access.
- Accept a client's choice not to discuss culture or race. Self-determination applies here too.
- Check your agency's defaults. Intake forms, opening hours and the languages on the website all signal who a service expects. Changing them is humility at the agency level, which is what the Code means by holding institutions accountable.
Culture shapes a plan; it does not override safety or legal duties. A cultural explanation for an injury to a child, for example, is explored respectfully and still reported if the law requires it.
Three common misreadings
- "Humility means you don't need to learn about cultures." The Code's own wording includes "committing to lifelong learning," and CSWE pairs humility with knowledge of how oppression works.
- "Competence is outdated." NASW kept it as the title of standard 1.05 and placed humility inside it. The profession added a stance; it did not drop the knowledge.
- "Culture means race or ethnicity." The Code's list runs to national origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, political belief, religion, immigration status, and mental or physical ability.
On the 2026 ASWB exam
ASWB's 2026 Guidebook never uses the phrase cultural humility. The ideas are all there, though. The Diversity and Social Justice section of the outlines covers anti-oppressive and anti-racist approaches, privilege and bias (including implicit bias and microaggressions), power differences and racial privilege, how culture, race, gender, sexual orientation and intersectionality shape behavior and identity, and access in language, physical and cultural terms. A separate statement covers cultural considerations when building an intervention plan. And the NASW Code, the backbone of the ethics questions, now contains standard 1.05(c) word for word as quoted above.
On questions about culture, the keyed answers follow a steady pattern:
- Ask, do not assume. The best option usually explores the client's own view of their culture, the problem and what would help, rather than acting on what is typical of a group.
- Examine your own bias. When a vignette shows the social worker's assumption or discomfort, the answer addresses that first, often through supervision.
- Adapt the plan with the client, within ethics and law. Cultural respect never cancels a safety concern or a mandated report.
- Work at the system level when the problem is systemic. Advocacy, interpreter access and agency change are social work answers too.
Where to study it
Our Diversity and Social Justice chapter covers anti-oppressive practice, privilege and bias, and power, and Assessment Practices covers cultural considerations in planning. The six core values shows how the Code's values become questions, the culture and spirituality section of a biopsychosocial assessment shows where this sits in an intake, and ASWB ethics questions, worked covers the reasoning behind the best answer. Trauma-informed care makes cultural, historical and gender issues one of SAMHSA's six principles.
Sources: Terry L. Cross, Barbara J. Bazron, Karl W. Dennis and Mareasa R. Isaacs, Towards a Culturally Competent System of Care (Georgetown University Child Development Center, March 1989); Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-García, "Cultural humility versus cultural competence," Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 9, no. 2 (1998); NASW Code of Ethics, standard 1.05 (current text, and the pre-2021 text in the Internet Archive's capture of January 6, 2021); CSWE, 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, Competency 3; ASWB Examination Guidebook (August 2026), content outlines and reference lists. Checked October 15, 2026. ASWB Master is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by the Association of Social Work Boards.