CPD case study

Meet Fiona

Fiona Lawson recently qualified as an ACA. She is currently an audit senior working in a medium-sized practice. Her audit client portfolio includes a number of large companies, as defined under the Companies Act 2006. 

Fiona's CPD requirements

Fiona estimates that she spends around half of her chargeable time working on large-company audits. Her estimate is based on the number of days spent on large audit clients as a proportion of total professional time (days) spent on client work.

As she spends more than 30% of her professional time working on large-company audit engagements, she falls into CPD practice category 2 and is required to undertake at least 30 hours of CPD annually, of which 20 hours must be verifiable.

Fiona must keep records and make them available to ICAEW on request. Her employer must also keep separate records.

Fiona's CPD activities

Fiona’s firm provides a programme of technical and skills training, which comprises regular financial reporting and auditing updates. It has a mandatory CPD requirement for qualified members of 30 hours annually and records CPD undertaken through its training programme. 

As well as completing her firm’s CPD training programme (30 hours, verifiable), Fiona also completes the firm’s mandatory annual ethics training, which has similar learning outcomes to ICAEW's ethics CPD course.

During the year she part-completes an externally delivered, certified programme of learning in data analytics, which is relevant given the firm’s increasing deployment of technologies within large audit clients. In addition, she completes two internal skills training programmes covering professional judgement and effective communication. This additional learning equates to 25 hours of additional verifiable CPD. While she did not finish the data analytics programme, she retains photographic (screenshot) evidence of learning activity during the year.