Your guide to CPD

CPD applies to all members who:

• do any accountancy-related work (paid or unpaid);
• do any other work for reward;
• act as a trustee or corporate director or who perform any role which carries with it similar financial/legal responsibilities; or
• plan to undertake any of the above activities in the future.

We recommend that you take the following approach to your CPD requirements: reflect, act, impact and declare.

Reflect

Consider your development needs and how you can meet them, and create a plan of action. Think about:

• Expectations – what do others expect of you and what standards do you expect of yourself?
• Changes – the main changes affecting you in your role.
• Responsibilities – what are the areas of responsibility for your role?
• Environment – what are the main business environment issues for you? 
• Knowledge gaps – what do you need to know about?

On reflection, you may decide that you do not need to do anything to meet your CPD needs if, for example, you are not currently working.

• More about CPD on a career break

Act

The following activities, if relevant to your role, could count as CPD:

• Technical reading
• Learning at work
• Meetings with experts
• Conferences
• Courses and seminars
• Online learning
• Workshops with your peers
• Reading magazines, newspapers and journals
• Registering for updates and email alerts.

Impact

Evaluate the effectiveness of what you have done. Are you satisfied that your actions have enabled you to meet your objectives, or do you need more work in this area?

Declare

Every year some members are asked to provide evidence of their compliance. We recommend that you keep an online record of your CPD during the year so that you can submit this easily if required to do so.

As part of our CPD regulations, ICAEW is required to monitor the CPD of its members. 

To make this as easy as possible, we've created a CPD record template so that ICAEW members have a convenient location to record all of their CPD activity.

You should include the following information:

1. A detailed description of your role and responsibilities

• A description of all your role/s held during the CPD year/period (1 November to 31 October).
• Identify any aspects of your role that carry any risks eg, Executive Director of PIEs, FCA regulated, Audit, KAP, Insolvency, MLRO, Probate Licence holder.

2. Reflect – a detailed description of your development needs

This must cover:

• changes to your role;
• technical aspects;
• ethics and professional scepticism; and
• professional skills and development.

3. Actions

• Detail what activity you have undertaken – reading / research / courses / webinars/ shadowing / discussions.

4. Outline the impact of those actions

5. Detail any matters carried forward to next year

6. Your reflections for next year.