Professionalism and Outcomes

What is Professionalism?

Professionalism is learning something new, or refreshing or developing your knowledge or skills in one of the following areas

  • Professional ethics, including the Code of Conduct
  • Knowledge of the primary business in which your clients work (business awareness)
  • The issues which may affect your clients (social awareness)
  • Client communication skills
  • Dealing with challenging clients
  • Equality and diversity issues
  • Time management skills

What is the difference between Outcomes- and Hours-based CPD?

Professionalism is an Outcome-based CPD requirement.

This means that, rather than specifying how many hours you completed on this activity, you need to decide what you want to learn from the activity. This will be your learning outcome.

For example:

  • Improve my knowledge of the primary business in which my clients work
  • Develop my client communication skills
  • Refresh my knowledge and understanding of equality and diversity issues

Reflect

>Which professionalism element would you like to work on this year?

>What do you need to learn?

Plan

>Plan a CPD activity which you think will meet your identified learning need

>Record your plan and the learning outcome (what you want to learn from the activity)

Act

Complete the activity no later than 30 September

Evaluate

Think about whether and how far the activity you undertook met your learning outcome