CPD has been defined as “the systematic maintenance and improvement of knowledge, skills and competence throughout a professional’s working life.” It is essentially about individuals, their development needs, what they can do to meet them, and a reflective evaluation of the outcomes achieved.

Whether we emerge into the working world after a first degree or straight from school, in our early 20’s, we are not unlike a fully charged learning battery. In essence it is a life-long battery, full of stored energy. However it can be rapidly discharged over the first few years as we move from job to job and experience to experience.

In some fortunate individuals the learning power levels are kept frequently topped up, though it is unlikely to reach former levels. Past the age of 30 the drain on energy continues and seems to accelerate as less charging takes place. The battery has also developed a “memory”: it cannot actually replenish to its former level because it thinks it is at maximum capacity. Total learning energy levels decline and as a result the buyers of learning energy tend to throw out the old levels and buy in new ones. It is intrinsically a wasteful situation with valuable human resources being underutilised. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) has a major role in reducing this waste and ASCP a key catalyst in developing and providing resources to meet the need.

Rapid developments in technology, new and shifting markets, the economic situation, greater emphasis on community and the environment, a more mobile international workforce, preparedness for a promotion or a change of job all place emphasis on the continuing need for an individual to be professionally competent.

Employers, clients and customers require better standards faster and at a lower cost. CPD should help to prepare individuals to cope with the challenges that will face them. It seems apparent that personal career management, like most aspects of life in the 21st century, is essentially quite short term in its outlook, and that this trend is now well established and likely to continue. There seems to be an acceptance that portfolio careers will be the norm and that the individual will be largely responsible for their own progress with only the best employers showing enlightened self interest where employee development is concerned.

Over and above the intrinsic satisfaction of learning and discovery CPD should give an individual an edge; a competitive edge in market terms. It should help in making them more competent in the job they do now and those they wish to carry out in the future. On the other side of the coin it will make their employers more favourably disposed towards them as employees and thus potentially reward them better, providing them with greater security than otherwise would be the case.

The learning environment has many seeming contradictions. Payment for tertiary education and its concomitant, the acquisition of debt, contrasts with a view that knowledge is for free and can be treated as a commodity product peddled through the Internet at virtually give away prices.

Standards need to be driven higher and yet learning has to be entertaining to cope with modern attention spans and is increasingly serviced by handout driven teaching and training methods. Consumers of learning require easily accessed structured learning with identifiable results delivering perceived value added. CPD needs to be sensitive to modern learning styles, i.e. intuitive to those who use the internet, can navigate their way through an Ikea store, buy from Amazon, and use budget airlines as their preferred carrier.

In my opinion the competence base with its implicit challenge of squaring the circle of the academic and the vocational, and the integration of qualification-based learning with competence-based assessment needs to be integral to CPD. Individuals are responsible for managing their own CPD. Professionals have an obligation to employers, professional institutions, government and society, and ultimately it must be the individual who drives and manages their CPD.