Knowledge as follows: The Core Body of Knowledge comprises those theories, skills, and effective

practices that people, working largely without supervision, must possess in order to plan, carry out, and report on valid and reliable evaluations of the programs of governments, other public sector agencies and organizations, not-for-profit organizations, and business. However, the specific set of skills and theories that lead to effective practices has not been established as of yet. Ongoing debates surrounding these issues have been inconclusive and lack of consensus within the evaluation community has fuelled the debate. Questions surrounding the knowledge, skills and performance criteria necessary to the certification process remain unanswered. Could it be that a lack of empirical research in this area has resulted in training programs that have been based on speculation (“what we think evaluators should know”) rather than on fact? The key question now becomes what set of skills and knowledge constitutes effective practices in the field of evaluation? Without denying the value of existing training programs, we would like to present a different, and possibly original, point of view on the subject. One of the first observations that emerged from the literature is that there is an obvious lac