Confident I'm Not Alone

How often do you cross the line from confidence to arrogance? Who are you more likely to think of as over-confident - yourself or others? If a surgeon calls themselves the "best" in their field is that more likely to re-assure you or concern you?

As someone who has been called arrogant more than a few times, I've knocked around questions like these quite a bit. The surgeon question, though it may seem out of place at first, is really of a piece with the others. When a friend recently spoke admiringly of a surgeon who said exactly this, I was caught off guard and wondered if that kind of uber-confidence would reassure me. I do know I would not want a surgeon or an electrician or a builder who was at all wishy-washy about their skills. Where is the line? How do you come across speaking of your skills? Is it acceptable for select professions to exude confidence bordering on arrogance? Which ones? Mine? Yours?

In the attribute series, several months ago I used charm for an attribute beginning with the letter "c". Had I thought of it at the time, grading myself on confidence might have been even more rich. I'm confident I'm not alone in my struggle to recognize where confidence ends and arrogance begins.