CPD Requirements and Compliance Audit

Continuing Professional Development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is important for all CPA to develop and maintain professional competence necessary to perform their roles as a professional accountant throughout their career and thereby to strengthen public confidence and trust in the profession.

This material provides a comprehensive overview of the CPD requirements and the CPD compliance audit process.  

CPD Compliance Audit

Every year, when members renew their membership, they are required to declared that, among other things, they have complied with the Institute’s CPD requirements. In this connection, certain members would be selected for audit on CPD compliance and will be asked to submit CPD records and documents to the Institute.  

CPD is of crucial importance for our profession and the audit is a necessary step to ensure members maintain and enhance their professional competence and technical knowledge. To help members understand the audit, we summarize the essential information of the audit below: 

• Members selected for the audit will need to provide documentation to support their CPD activities, including attendance or completion of their verifiable CPD activities.  All underlying documents will be checked in order to evaluate whether the reported CPD activities were undertaken.  They will also need to explain why the CPD activities undertaken are relevant to their professional work.

  (Note: Members should provide the required documentation by the stipulated deadline. A handling fee would be applied, when appropriate, for late submissions.)

• The audit will determine if members have complied with the CPD requirements by assessing the relevance and adequacy of the CPD activities undertaken based on the information and documents furnished by members.  Any non-compliance identified would fall under the following two categories and in respect of which follow-up actions are to be taken:

Shortfall of CPD hours in relevant CPD activities 

First-time non-compliance: The member is required to make up for the shortfall within a specified time and will have a higher chance to be re-selected in the next audit.   In addition, s/he will also be required to complete a mandatory course on CPD requirements as part of the required remedial action.  Failing that, s/he will not be allowed to renew his/ her membership for the subsequent year. 

Repeated non-compliance: The member needs to provide reason for the repeated non-compliance.  If the member is unable to provide a reasonable explanation*, his/ her registration may be revoked under section 27(1)(a)(iii) of the Professional Accountants Ordinance (PAO), or disallowed for renewal for the subsequent year under section 28(2)(c) of the PAO.

* Explanation of merely not understanding or overlooking the CPD requirements would likely not be considered as a reasonable excuse.

Non-completion of or non-responding to audit

The member will not be allowed to renew his/ her membership for the subsequent year if s/he has not responded to/ completed the CPD compliance audit.  

For details on CPD requirements, please refer to Statement 1.500 Continuing Professional Development.