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Abstract
Social work colleagues typically do not observe one another's encounters with clients in the community. Furthermore, the outcomes of intervention are uncertain and resist easy specification. Social workers, however, routinely discuss encounters with clients and display satisfactory performance by providing accounts of their actions to colleagues in the agency setting. These accounts are crucial to the worker, forming the basis of his or her assessment by the supervisor. In such contexts satisfactory work can only be “seen” through satisfactory accounts that display occupational expectations about practice. However, in providing these displays, workers select and filter their comments to preserve their own occupational interests. Thus accounts are never simply about the client encounter, but reflect specific occupational assumptions and relationships as well.

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