See the first post in The Pragmatic Programmer 20th Anniversary Edition series for an introduction. Taking responsibility, in my opinion, is a large part of what contributes towards being a professional - as opposed to simply trading time for money. Furthermore, it not only applies to Software Engineering but to any profession and everyday life. Tip #4 (“Provide Options, Don’t Make Lame Excuses”) is especially applicable to Software Engineering. We solve problems, if the entire problem space was known already we wouldn’t have much of a job to do!