CPE CPA: Personal Choices and Planning

CPE CPA: Personal Choices and Planning



Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) in the United States must satisfy approximately 40 hours (depending on the state) of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) each year. Each professional's approach to CPE CPA will depend upon individual aspirations - but also upon personal learning style and preferences. This article discusses approaches to developing a personalized training strategy and explores a way to get the most benefit from any training.



CPAs are almost the very definition of knowledge workers, so it is no surprise that CPA CPE is required. In the accounting profession, access to knowledge and new information is needed, and the nature of an individual's choices depends on the specialty, goals, and aspirations of each professional accountant. For planning purposes, there are three categories of skills for CPE CPA: 1. 'technical skills' in a specification area of specialization, 2. 'hard skills' in adjacent or objective business domains, and 3. 'soft skills' to develop greater personal savvy. Here's some detail on each.



Technical Skills for CPE CPA

By technical skills, I am referring to skills in and around the CPA's specialty. Some of these skills are of a broadening type within the



accounting profession, such as accounting for capital budgeting, or budgeting in general. But more often than not, they involve expertise in accounting rules, usually involving changing legislation as well as best practices, in certain specialties. For example, one accounting practitioner may want to expand knowledge about inheritance taxation. Another may need to keep abreast of unique accounting complexities in, for example, the construction industry. Still another may be intensely involved with international business and require broader knowledge of how to handle transactions between countries.



CPE CPA for Objective Hard Skills

Separate and distinct from the technical skills are hard skills in areas like software, such as MS Office, accounting software, or even enterprise management software. Other hard skills include business skills such as project management, portfolio management, business analysis, Six Sigma, and much more. These skills are not core to accounting itself, but can greatly increase the effectiveness of a CPA and fuel new business objectives.



CPE CPA for Soft Skills

Soft skills are ultimately the most important, and working with clients, within any size business, or in the public domain demands robust soft skills. Indeed, it is widely accepted that a large - maybe even vast majority - proportion of success is determined by soft skills. These skills include leadership, communications, team building, and technical writing and speaking in public.



Personalizing an Approach to earning CPE CPA

A CPA has about 40 hours of CPE opportunity each year for continuing education. Ideally, this will be accomplished by an optimal blend of technical training related to the specialty, targeted hard skill development, and soft skills to support accomplishment of ALL goals. The good news is that there is plenty of training out there to achieve all of these objectives and earn CPE simultaneously.



One More Thing

The 'multiple sources' strategy is something that brings great advantages to those that use it. A 'multiple sources' strategy refers to the idea of learning a subject from multiple angles - which is realized by absorbing the material from several distinct sources. Each of these sources will offers a different perspective on the subject, enabling the learner to more clearly understand the subject. While many materials - including the online training that we provide - incorporate this type of learning by portraying different angles, in the end the individual learner needs to decide their optimal approach.

John Reiling provides hundreds of NASBA-approved CPA CPE CPA online training courses on the site CPEtrainingonline.com. John has earned multiple licenses and certifications - licensed Professional Engineer (PE), several IT certifications, and current Project Management Professional (PMP) and Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB). He provides additional professional online training under PROtrainingonline.com