Cpe For Cpa: Planned, Personalized, And Optimized

By Author: JohnReiling
Total Articles: 16
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CPAs are almost the very definition of knowledge workers, so it only stands to reason that CPE for CPA is required. In the accounting profession, there is so much to know, 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 CPA CPE: 1. 'technical skills' in a professional specialty, 2. 'hard skills' in related business domains, and 3. 'soft skills' to become more savvy on the people side of professional life. Here's some detail on each.

Technical Skills for CPE for CPA
By technical skills, I am talking about the areas related to the CPA's specialty. Some of these skills are of a broadening type within the

accounting profession, such as capital budget accounting, 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 deepen and maintain up-to-date knowledge about inheritance taxation. ...
... Another may need to keep abreast of accounting rules and unique business structures in, for example, the medical device industry. Still another may be providing service related to international business and require broader knowledge of how to handle transactions between countries.

CPE for 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 for CPA for Soft Skills
Soft skills are critically important, and working with clients, within a large or small business, or in the public domain demands well-developed 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 even related areas such as public speaking and writing.

Personalizing an Approach to earning CPE for CPA
A CPA has about 40 hours to work with each year for improving skills. Ideally, this will be accomplished by an optimal blend of technical training related to the specialty, hard skill CPE to support broadening of skills into objective areas, 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 satisfy CPE requirements simultaneously.

John Reiling provides hundreds of NASBA-approved CPA CPE for 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

One Last Item
The 'multiple sources' strategy is an approach that generously rewards those that use it. A 'multiple sources' strategy refers to the idea of learning a subject from multiple angles - which can be achieved by studying the material from multiple sources. Each of these sources will usually approach the subject from a different angle, enabling the learner to deepen understanding of the subject. While many materials - including the online training that we provide - try to embed the 'multiple sources' approach, it is up to the individual to decide how they will approach this.