Staying Certified: Get those CPEs
As a career coach I always tell my clients that before they work to achieve a certification they give some thought as to how they will maintain that certification. These are some of my suggestions.
For any certification program there are multiple ways to recertify. All certification programs define rules that require people holding the certification to demonstrate that they are maintaining their knowledge. You demonstrate that you are continuously learning by submitting Continuing Professional Education or CPEs.
CPEs are weighted based on how much time and effort you expended. You can achieve CPEs by listening to a presentation or attending an event. You can also accumulate CPEs for other activities such as training or mentoring. Unlike attending a presentation you will be able to claim more CPEs for a presentation that you develop and then deliver.
How many CPEs can you claim credit for? The general rule of thumb is that you can claim one CPE for each hour you spend listening to; preparing for; or delivering a presentation. But don’t try to claim too many hours for any presentation.
CPEs are often audited to try to seek out those claiming for something they didn’t do. If you try to claim hours for developing a presentation that you downloaded from the Internet your claim for those CPEs could be rejected. That means you get zero CPEs for that activity. It’s never good to have CPEs rejected as it gives the auditor a reason to look at other CPEs you submitted.
So what do you submit? If you don’t have a piece of paper (to scan) or a PDF document that has your name, the name of the host organization, the title of an event, and the dates the event took place you probably shouldn’t seek CPEs for that activity. Aside from that piece of paper you should be prepared to write 300 words or so about what you did or what you learned at said event. If you don’t have this information and get audited; you are probably not going to be able to claim that activity for CPEs (and you just wasted your time).
A mistake that too many people make is putting off claiming CPEs until close to when they are due. I coach my clients to spend just 30 minutes every month checking their certification status and gathering and submitting their CPEs.
I suggest creating a spreadsheet on the desktop of your computer to maintain your CPE info. In that spreadsheet record the date, name of host, name of event, URL for event, hours that you attended, CPE credits you claimed, the description you may have entered, and notes. It’s really simple and very helpful if you attend the same event year after year.
It’s important to note that you can attend one event and submit CPEs to multiple certification programs. If you hold your CompTIA Security+, CySA+, and or CASP+ you can submit CPEs gained by attending a talk about Identity and Access Management to ISC2 to maintain your CCSP or CISSP certification. Those same CPEs can also be submitted to ISACA if you hold their CISA or CISM certification.
Being able to submit the same CPEs to multiple programs works as long as the certifications are aligned. In the example above these are all cybersecurity certifications. If I were to submit those same CPEs for a networking certification (CCNA or Network+); they may not be allowed. That’s why it is important to consider grouping your certifications (networking, cybersecurity, cloud) and not trying to achieve and maintain too many.
Once you have achieved a certification; accumulating CPEs is the easy way to maintain your certification. There are other ways such as taking courses and passing exams. Developing and executing a monthly plan to gather and submit CPEs is by far the easiest and least expensive way of maintaining your certification.
