This is not to take away from your point, since I agree with you, but both accountants and finance professionals have stringent licensing requirements which (in theory) could provide a baseline expectation of competence.
That is the reason they get away with not testing them, because they have a universal test they can look to. Software jobs are pretty fluid, so unless we have a massive standard test that cover anything from embedded c to FE with react, it seems that kind of test is out of reach for software people.
Civil Engineering has a huge gamut in specializations and in the last century has seen quite a lot of technological change; programming isn't as special as it thinks it is here. A credential test doesn't have to cover everything, it just has to cover the foundations and get some sense that a person is capable of life-long learning and improvement.
