Professional development

ICAEW Chartered Accountants are known for their professionalism and expertise. Professional development is about how you advance your career through improving yourself by learning and training. The ACA has professional development ladders that will prepare you to handle a variety of different situations you will encounter throughout your career.

ACA students are required to demonstrate competence across seven professional skills areas (otherwise known as ladders) throughout their training. Each area or ladder contains six to eight steps, each representing a skill. You will develop these skills within the exams and the workplace. You will need to record your progress with each skill within your training file. 

There are 52 specific skills across seven categories:

As an ACA Student following the ICAEW professional development ladders you will need to:

• demonstrate competence across each skill area;
• log a specific example for each skill in your training file using examples from your experience in the workplace. When logging examples, you should be adopting a Situation, Task, Action and Result (STAR) method;
• and log your employers feedback on each example in their training file. This feedback should be documented in full sentences.