CPD case study

Meet Penny

Penny Sirash left the UK in 1997, soon after qualifying as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant. She is a partner at a Big Four firm in the US, working in their deal advisory practice. Her role is to lead on financial due diligence engagements. Penny has been in this role for approximately nine years as full-equity partner.

Penny's CPD requirements

Penny uses the CPD self-assessment tool to help identify which CPD category is most appropriate. As she works in a practice providing corporate finance services to businesses, she is in CPD practice category 2. Penny is, therefore, required to complete a minimum of 30 hours of CPD annually, of which 20 hours must be verifiable.

Penny is required to keep records and make them available to ICAEW on request.

Penny's CPD activities

Penny undertakes all of her CPD through attending firm-organised training events. The firm has a CPD requirement of 40 hours a year.

During the CPD year she attends two (three-day) in-person deal advisory training events and a (two-day) lead partner training event at the firm’s national training centre. In addition, she completes the firm’s mandatory ethics and independence online training, which comprises three hours of ethics training every quarter (12 hours in total). 

Her firm’s training centre app (downloaded onto Penny’s mobile device) automatically tracks her location and checks her attendance on the course for each session/day.

For her online ethics training, CPD is recorded via her unique log in details. Penny's employer maintains records of her CPD and she is able to ask for access if she needs to provide evidence of her CPD activities.