Excellent surgeon in northeast shows innocence
I believe the answer is:
naivete
'innocence' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'excellent surgeon in northeast' is the wordplay.
'excellent' becomes 'ai'.
'surgeon' becomes 'vet' (I've seen this in other clues).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'northeast' becomes 'ne' ('NE' can be a synonym of 'northeast').
'ai'+'vet'='aivet'
'aivet' inserted within 'ne' is 'NAIVETE'.
'shows' is the link.
(Other definitions for naivete that I've seen before include "Quality of the simple" , "Lack of worldliness" , "Ingenuosity" , "Ingenuousness" , "Greenness" .)