As a licensed CPA, I am required to obtain 120 hours of Continuing Professional Education (CPE). Four of those hours also have to be in ethics.
Beyond the ethics, the CPE can be on almost any topic. The ICPAS had a program before their Accounting and Finance Show that gave an hour of CPE for listening to Jim Lovell, of Apollo 13 fame talk about his career. That hour is more memorable than others by far.
I have had peers that were audited in the past and surprising have come up short of their 120 hours. I typically surpass 200.
With the consulting component of our business we need to be topical on more than just tax law changes or proposed accounting changes. Once I was asked to review a HR manual, it lacked any verbiage on the then new IL conceal and carry law or the medicinal marijuana laws. The client was shocked that I knew about the laws.
I just took a WordPress class, my website is designed in WordPress and I knew enough to be dangerous. Now I am even more dangerous. But I do like being able to do the general maintenance and updating of the website. I am typically posting the blogs to the website.
But because of the flexibility of my CPE requirement, I get to seek out presentations and webinars on all sorts of topics. I enjoy learning for the sake of learning. You never know what knowledge will help my business or my clients businesses. As well as tax and accounting updates.
We may be consultants, but we are CPA’s as well and the financial portion of the client’s business is critically important to their success.