IES 7, Continuing Professional Development (Revised)

The revised International Education Standard (IES) 7, Continuing Professional Development, clarifies the principles and requirements for how professional accountancy organizations measure, monitor, and enforce their continuing professional development systems. It makes it clear that all professional accountants must develop and maintain professional competence to perform their role.

The revised IES 7 places greater emphasis on learning and development needed for professional accountants’ roles and responsibilities rather than focusing on a minimum number of hours. Significant revisions include:

• Requiring professional accountants to record relevant continuing professional development (CPD);
• Clarifying the output-based measurement approach, which requires professional accountants demonstrate competence;
• Clarifying the input-based measurement approach, which requires professional accountants demonstrate competence by completing a specified amount of learning and development;
• Promoting the use of a CPD framework to provide an example structure and guidance to help professional accountants identify, undertake, and record relevant development; and
• Providing CPD measurement approaches with examples of related verifiable evidence to improve adoption.

In addition to the support materials below, the IAESB also recorded a short roundtable video discussion highlighting changes and their implications to further support adoption and implementation.