This sounds like a project-based Units setting. Go into your options, and you should be able to find a Units sub-menu. From there, you can tell it that you prefer quadrant bearing.
In the attribute, the Direction field is storing decimal degrees no matter what you enter in the Traverse. It's simply the unit settings that tell Pro whether or not to display those bearings differently.
If you need to edit the traverse and have those changes affect the geometry itself, use the Trace Lines option in the Traverse tool. Click on the first segment of your traverse, trace along to the end, click again. Your lines should now load into the traverse tool, and edits to the COGO values here will modify the geometry.
- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS