We would like to thank Ray Newton, CFO of System Source, for this article.
What do accountants, financial planners, human resource professionals, IT professionals, teachers, and massage therapists all have in common? Continuing education, of course – and as a CPA, I am part of that group. With my license renewal rapidly approaching, I have been attempting to select a few meaningful courses from the litany of emails I receive offering Continuing Professional Education (CPE). Frequently, my attention is drawn to the courses that seem very familiar to me – a.k.a. “comfort zone courses.” The behavior seems to be instinctual. Many courses I attend seem to be full of individuals who must have succumbed to the urge, given that often times most of the “questions” from the audience include a stump-the-instructor or in-my-experience one-way dialog.
It’s not that these individuals’ input is not valuable to me, but I can’t help asking myself the obvious rhetorical question of, “If you know the material that well, why are you here?” I believe the E in CPE stands for education not elaborating. If you are comfortable with the material in your CPE experiences, and leave the sessions confident that you know everything about the materials covered, chances are you are choosing the wrong courses. Rather than choosing courses that match the core of what you do on a day-to-day basis, seeking out learning experiences that are on the fringes of your knowledge may help you expand your scope of competency. The payoffs come in many ways. Better cross-functional communications in your company, reductions in outside professional fees, and prevention of unintentional compliance violations are among them.
Remember – you never know what you don’t know (unless of course you do!).
