Continuing Professional Development

What is Continuing Professional Development?

CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development. CPD is the process of documenting the skills, knowledge, and experience that you gain as you work, beyond any initial training. CPD enables people to learn while they work and stay conscious about that learning.

Continuing Professional Development helps you develop on an ongoing basis. It helps you to record, review and reflect on what you learn throughout your career. It does not show you progress in training, you progress in as a professional. It’s broader than academic education and professional training. In simple words, Continuing Professional Development is a process of documenting what you have learned while working. You must be thinking why Continuing Professional Development is in trend right now. you will get that answer below.

Why you should pay attention to Continuing Professional Development?

• Continuing Professional Development motivates you to never stop learning which is going to help you in your carrier.
• Soon, your Continuing Professional Development will be going to determine how experienced you are.
• Continuing Professional Development shows your professional development into data.
• Continuing Professional Development provides you a data which shows you how far you have come and new you can learn.
• It will help you set new goals for your development.
• It can help you make a decision regarding carrier change.
• It can show you how far are you from your goals.
• Shows you your weakness and strength.
• If you have a Continuing Professional Development report you can shine your interview.

How to create a Continuing Professional Development Report?

Step 1: Start creating a Continuing Professional Development report.

Create a learning log and record your thoughts on it. You must write things in detail and make notes on learning points.  By writing your experience you will know your strengths and weakness which will help you make future goals.

Step 2: Where are you now?

When you record your experiences you have something you can compare yourself with. For example, you can compare your current performance with your past year’s performance. You should always know how far you have come. Different people have different experiences and qualities so you should never compare your performance with others.

Step 3:  Where do you want to be?

Write down your career goals. Why are you in this profession, where do you see yourself in 10, 5, and 2 years?   What are your short-term goals?

Make a list of your habits and analyze are those habits are beneficial for your learning process. Eliminate bad habits and develop good habits, for example, read books in your spare time, etc.

Step 4: What do you have to do to get there?

Make a note of what you should do to achieve your career goals. This may include higher education, training, career change.

you should make notes of things that you can do today to achieve your goals.

Step 5: When should you review progress?

You can review your progress whenever you want, but you have to review your progress at least every year. At the end of the accounting year, you should compare your progress with your last year’s performance. By that, you will find how far you have come compared to last year.