Mixing INNER And OUTER Joins

I've encountered this problem multiple times in the past and I have a solution but wonder if there might be a more elegant method of achieving the same result...

Take the following example:SELECT * FROM [User]
LEFT OUTER JOIN [Profile] ON [Profile].[UserId] = [User].[UserId]
INNER JOIN [Department] ON [Department].[DepartmentId] = [Profile].[DepartmentId]

Users may or may not have a profile (but never more than one). A profile may or may not have a department (but never more than one).

Now, this will return only users that have a profile even though an outer join has been used. What I really want is to return all users and include their profile and department details but only when the profile has a department.

The solution I have used in the past is:

SELECT * FROM [User]
LEFT OUTER JOIN
(
SELECT *
FROM [Profile]
INNER JOIN [Department] ON [Department].[DepartmentId] = [Profile].[DepartmentId]
) [ProfileDepartment] ON [ProfileDepartment].[UserId] = [User].[UserId]

The trouble here is that I've lost the ability to reference department and profile independantly in the outer query. Also, more complex scenarios can also become horribly complex if this needs to be done multiple times in the same query.

I could do this:SELECT * FROM [User]
LEFT OUTER JOIN [Profile] ON [Profile].[UserId] = [User].[UserId] AND [Profile].[DepartmentId] IS NOT NULL
LEFT OUTER JOIN [Department] ON [Department].[DepartmentId] = [Profile].[DepartmentId]

But again I feel that the intention is not at all clear. I want to inner join department to profile because I'm only interested in profiles with a department and departments referenced by a profile.

I would like to be able to specify that the departments should be inner joined to profiles and whichever profiles remain get outer joined to users whilst retaining department and profile as seperate entities within the query.

Is there any way to use brackets to indicate an order of precedance to the logical joins within the from clause?

Daniel