Perhaps not, however I still believe that professionalism is subject to interpretation.
The concept "If you don not fly the aircraft exactly by company profile 100% of the time you are not professional" also does not equate, as least as far as I'm concerned.
I have done enough flying, both civilian and military, that relied not only on adherence to set procedures but the use of sound decision making, independent thought and action, and outside of the box thinking. I sincerely believe that 100% reliance on textbook procedure can be potentially dangerous.
But that's just me...YMMV
I don't believe anyone said "If you don not fly the aircraft exactly by company profile 100% of the time you are not professional".
What I took away from the discussion is that you should STRIVE to fly that way. And, in reality, 99.9% of your flying should be able to conform to how the company wants things done. Certainly, a normal operation, sans the fact you have passed a release out the door, or have no pax on board, is not a reason to ignore the company profiles. If you wanna test something out, do that in the sim. You're there 2X a year.
There is a time to fly off flight plan or company profiles. However, in 14 years of 121, I haven't run across a situation to throw the company profiles out the window. Of course the flight plan is a different story.
Now, to placate some of our pilots that may fly at a place that doesn't have a SOP, then you have a far wider breadth of operational scope. Do what you want. Those rules are loose for whatever reason. If the company doesn't give you guidelines, you have the latitude to use whatever technique you want.
I think it is very weak on a 121 pilot's part to not be able to fly within the guidelines/profiles almost 100% of the time. Even at my 2 carriers that were not close to the top-shelf, we had very specific SOPs that covered damn near every scenario. I'm not saying I liked the procedures, or even if they would be my preferred technique. However, the procedures were workable and safe, and I was able to safely and smoothly comply with them.