Continuing professional development: it’s a redundant phrase, no? Like the notice in a fishmonger’s window that reads, ‘Fresh fish sold here’? (Students of grammar will understand the analogy. Everyone else should click here for a brief explanation.)
A pedant might argue that ‘development’ suggests a process that is in itself ‘continuing’. That same nitpicker may ask why it matters whether one is professional or amateur as long as one is learning, or if anyone would really be expected to undergo ‘continuing professional decline’.
Someone who actually knows something about CPD, like the Chartered Institute of Taxation’s membership manager, Helen Burgess, would reply by saying that the process is named as such to differentiate it from reactive or less focussed forms of career growth.
‘CPD is more than reading a few tax magazines, going along to a course picked out by your boss, or simply working in the tax sector for year after year,’ she says. ‘It’s the proactive management of a chartered tax adviser’s most valuable asset: technical expertise.’
Continuing professional development, then, is an essential part of a CTA’s career – and that is why Taxation.co.uk this week officially launched a CPD section.
It’s easy-to use and free to all visitors, who need only register their name and email address (and then pick a username and password) to begin a multiple-choice quiz based on articles from recent issues of Taxation.
One sub-section alerts users to the stories to which they should pay particular attention when sitting the latest test (older quizzes can be taken, too), while another sub-section provides a brief guide to how our new web offering contributes towards professional institutes’ CPD requirements (with links to further online information).
Reading Taxation has long been considered an unstructured manner through which tax professionals can earn CPD accreditation, and now this site’s latest feature offers a structured approach that will allow users to profit more from each issue of our magazine.
Users of the simple CPD feature can take each quiz as many times as they like, saving the process at any point and returning later to where they left off. The system also allows users to view their scores and email them to their own inboxes.
What our site doesn’t do is provide an official timing or CPD marks; it is up to each individual CTA to judge how much time he or she spends on research and answers. (We suggest that you award yourself 15 minutes per correct answer.)
‘Tax changes frequently, and I would encourage [CTAs] to constantly self-review and also engage with managers, colleagues and other contacts to ensure they are getting the most of out their CPD experience,’ says Helen Burgess.
Taxation’s new section allows such action: questions will be changed regularly, and each update will be posted on Taxation.co.uk and via Twitter, which like our new CPD section is one of the ways in which we aim to interact online with our users.
We used other interactive means to when our CPD offering was soft-launched (semi-officially launched, if you will) a few weeks ago: a tweet (short message) was sent to our Twitter followers to ask for their opinions and suggestions for improvements.
This was followed shortly after by a similar appeal on our weekly e-newsletter, Taxation in Three Minutes (subscribe free of charge via this site) and on our Facebook page.
It is these web features and others such as our newly devised LinkedIn networking group UK Tax Professionals, our blogs and the comment boxes at the foot of every online story that allow tax professionals to interact with counterparts beyond their immediate circle of colleagues and associates; Taxation’s readers and web-using tax experts everywhere can become part of one another’s online contacts and resources – and all can engage with the magazine’s editorial staff.
Such offerings will continue to be exploited by us to the full and also be joined by other digital tools to allow a greater exchange of information and views with our readers.
For more than 80 years, Taxation has been the UK’s leading provider of tax technical information in print, and now it’s time to match that reputation online. This is our CPD focus.
