The road of knowledge

Follow the road of knowledge

You will get the most out of your CPD if you follow the plan, do, review cycle  By planning your CPD carefully, you can identify the skills and knowledge you require to achieve your personal and professional development goals by:

  • planning what areas you need to develop and sourcing relevant learning activities
  • doing relevant CPD
  • reviewing what you learned and if you need any further development.

Following the plan, do, review cycle will help you stay on track with your development and identify any gaps or areas where you need to do more learning. 

It will also make it easier to complete your annual CPD declaration, because it’ll help you to assess if you’ve met the CPD requirement for the year.

Tips to get you started

  • Focus on relevance

    When you’re planning your CPD and choosing activities the most important thing to focus on is the relevance.

    Make sure what you’re learning is relevant to your role and your career ambitions.

  • Key things to think about

    If you work in accounting and finance, you will need to keep your technical knowledge current. Practising members should aim to ensure that an appropriate amount of development is undertaken in their area(s) of technical specialism.

    Members holding an ACCA practising certificate and audit qualification must ensure they maintain their competence in audit - even if no audit work is currently being undertaken.

    If your career has moved away from accounting and finance, you should undertake learning which is relevant to your new career - which could be anything from teaching to law, or consultancy to IT.

  • Consider non-technical skills

    No matter what route your career has taken, it is important to also consider non-technical skills. You may wish to pursue learning in:

    • business management
    • personal effectiveness
    • leadership and strategy; or
    • information technology (IT).

    We recognise activity within all of these areas - what is important is that your learning is relevant to you and how you demonstrate this learning.

Our guide to preparing your CPD declaration

Approach your annual CPD declaration using the following steps:

  1. Plan your CPD
  2. Do your CPD
  3. Review your CPD

Once you have completed these three steps you will be ready to make your annual CPD declaration.