The recertification of the professional accounting qualification in Estonia: the requirements and quality of CPD

Abstract

The recertification of the professional accounting qualification in Estonia: the requirements and quality of CPD As the purpose of a professional qualification should be to ensure quality to employers/customers, appro-priate requirements for professional training should not be too low. On the other hand, too high require-ments for the amount of training would lead to the situation where maintaining the level is expensive and if the labour market does not consider having a professional certificate necessary, recertification will be discarded. The purpose of the research was to identify the factors that influence an accountant’s decision whether to recertify his/her professional qualification or not. The conditions of recertification were ana-lysed and compared to other countries as were the requirements set up for auditors. The results of the survey revealed that in Estonia the decision not to recertify one’s professional qualification was mainly due to not having fulfilled the required number of qualification hours or not having certificates proving one’s participation in qualification training sessions. At the same time, compared to other countries, the requirements in Estonia are very low. So that the increase in the amount of training would not hinder recertification, alternative solutions for Estonia are proposed in the article.