Passed the Certified Public Accountant exam? Congrats! The reward? A lifetime of continuing professional education! Welcome to the wonderful world of CPE for CPAs, in which accountants keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. Don’t like books? Too bad! This is accounting – a profession, which means (that is, “meant,” past tense) something done outside of remunerative considerations, so presumably such a career was embarked on out of a love of books and numbers!
And lots of reading and computations is what’s in store for the newly minted CPA, taking up the drudgery that a firm’s partners and more senior members avoid. That, and a whole lot of CPA CPEcourses! Luckily, unlike work on the job, such self-study is often pursued at one’s own pace, with no deadlines to worry about. And thanks to the power of the worldwide web, it’s more convenient than ever before!
Simply log on and a wealth of CPA CPEcourses are available, some of them even free! That’s right; free! Yes, it’s something they never told you about in school, but there is such as thing as a free accounting course, even if there is something of a catch. Yes, a catch! But only vaguely, and quite fairly, even: simply make sure to actually finish the course and provide feedback. See, most of these offerings are but pilot courses and it is in exchange for providing such helpful observations to the course designers that you are able to participate for free.
So, yes, look on the bright side – at least you didn’t have to pay for it, onerous as it was! Then again, as mentioned previously, it’s unlikely that anyone would make a career of accounting without finding something of interest about it, such that continuing education should not prove to be so miserable!