Abstract: Ongoing debate regarding the relevance of planning professionalism has implications for the effectiveness of the professions in the 21st century. This is not a comfortable state for urban planning if it has to stand in equal status with other professionals. Planning’s claims to possess an exclusive body of knowledge and to deliver outcomes that benefit the public at large are often challenged. Alongside this picture of decline, contrasting evidence has also been developing, influenced by a renewed conceptual framework of professionalism that reasserts the value of planning professionalism to deal with complex development management issues relating to space and place. In this context, discussion about professional discretion has re-emerged. This paper reports research findings that examine the different types of discretion exercised by planning professionals in English and Victorian Planning systems. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with planners in England in order to establish an understanding of the different types of discretion and their roles in planners’ professional decision making. This kind of understanding will then be used to explore professional discretion in the Victorian planning system. The paper argues that these findings provide a venue for further research to articulate more clearly the benefits of, and impediments to, the use of professional discretion in development management processes in Australia. The paper concludes with the argument that, to understand how discretion can be harnessed usefully as central element of professionalism, the ‘judgment centric’ of decision making needs to be understood.