Unlock your Leadership Potential
Leadership is the engine by which you advance in your career. The most effective leaders can think, act, and influence strategically, balancing priorities to help their organization achieve its goals. That’s why investing in improving your leadership skills—especially early on in your career—is critical to enhancing your professional development.
Designed for newly licensed CPAs*, NCACPA’s new CPA LEAD Certificate Program aims to build competency, leadership skills, and improve your marketability within the profession. This self-paced, one-year program provides training tailored to the changing roles of a CPA. The educational content focuses on the skills necessary to prospering in our current business climate and gives members an opportunity to choose from various engagement activities aimed at increasing involvement with NCACPA.
*While this certificate program is intended for new CPAs (within 3 years of licensure), any NCACPA member who is a licensed CPA is eligible to participate.
Skills for Your Future
By enrolling in the CPA LEAD Certificate Program, you are taking responsibility for your own professional growth and development.
As you complete the five on demand courses included in this program, you will learn critical skills needed to manage, lead, and succeed in today’s complex business environment. Completion of the program demonstrates the expansion of your professional competencies and knowledge base, as well as sharpened leadership and management skills.
Cost of Certificate: $150
# of CPE Credits included with Certificate: 5 hours
ESSENTIAL SKILLS IN THE WORKPLACE
The CPA LEAD Certificate Program addresses 5 of the top 10 essential skills needed in 2020, identified by the World Economic Forum. These skills are also considered essential to the CPA and accounting profession, as the role of a CPA evolves.
Top 10 Essential Skills in 2020:
Cognitive Flexibility  | Emotional Intelligence |
| Complex Problem Solving | Judgement & Decision Making |
| Coordinating with Others | Negotiation |
| Creativity | People Management |
| Critical Thinking | Service Orientation |
Key Certificate Program Takeaways
LEARN
The CPA LEAD Certificate Program is engineered to help you achieve professional growth. The selected courses cover a broad array of topics that are essential for leaders in the current professional environment.
You’ll also receive a total of 5 hours of CPE included with the certificate purchase!
ENGAGE
Throughout your involvement in the program, you will uncover opportunities and resources provided by NCACPA that strengthen your business connections and relationships and provide access to a wide network of informed and interconnected contacts.
Learning Details
NCACPA carefully selected programs that we believe cover valuable and essential topics to CPAs.
- Strategies for Making Better Decisions: Learn mental strategies that allow you to analyze old thinking approaches and replace them with more effective reasoning processes that support better decision making in a variety of situations including biases in thinking, problem framing, and more.
- Developing Critical & Flexible Thinking Skills: Learn an approach to critical thinking that supports a more flexible and adaptable mindset, including the neuroscience involved in flexible thinking. In addition, you will learn how to recognize a growth versus fixed mindset which critical in the business world today.
- Think Like a Leader: Learn strategies that allow the development of exceptional leadership traits including how to build engagement, the role of psychological safety, creating an environment for success, communication patterns associated with effective teams, and transparency.
- Emotional Intelligence: Leave with a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence that will give you the ability to recognize emotional cues and regulate emotional responses. The course will focus on ways to understand three levels of empathy, learning how our brains process emotional content, emotional distancing, the role of emotions in rational thought and logical decision making, and how mindfulness supports emotional intelligence.
- Uncovering Your Hidden Bias: Explore different types of diversity and unconscious bias, including ways to mitigate our own unconscious bias. Learn how and why unconscious bias forms in the brain, and develop strategies to counteract the biases we all have, including mitigating microaggressions so you are not inadvertently offending your peers and employees.
Engagement Details
Choose how YOU want to engage with NCACPA!
Participants can choose from various activities aimed to better connect with the association and the profession, such as:
- Attend a social or networking event
- Write an article for NCACPA’s magazine, Interim Report, or our blog
- Participate in a committee
- Partake in community service with Volunteer 365
- Start a discussion in Connect
How It Works
Take these Steps to Get Started on Your Leadership Journey Today:
 | STEP 1: Enroll in the CPA LEAD Certificate Program.
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 | STEP 2: After enrolling in the program, you will receive an email receipt and confirmation from NCACPA.
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 | STEP 3: Fulfill all CPA LEAD Certificate Program requirements within 365 days of your registration to successfully complete the program. To complete the program, participants must:
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 | STEP 4: Upon completion of all program requirements, your tracking dashboard will be reviewed by NCACPA staff. If all requirements are fulfilled, you will receive your digital certificate via email. |
 | STEP 5: Celebrate! Congratulations on completing the CPA LEAD Certificate Program! You can now tell your friends about your awesome new skills! |
See below tabs for specific information on CPA LEAD Certificate Program requirements.
NCACPA Account
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 5 minutes
Have you ever missed out on an opportunity or giveaway because someone had an outdated contact number or address for you? What about your mail being sent to a previous employer by mistake? This is a common occurrence that can be resolved with a simple fix: updating your contact information.
Not only will this help you receive more accurate and timely information, it could even help in an emergency.
Participants of the CPA LEAD Certificate Program are required to update their NCACPA accounts with correct and up-to-date contact information. This means “active member” status, as well as email, address, organization, title, etc.
Topics of Interest
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 10 minutes
We know your inbox is inundated with industry updates, articles, regulatory changes, and more. Since your time is limited, let NCACPA filter the relevant news based on your interests. Discover upcoming CPE, news updates, networking events, and more on your personalized news feed. Update your topics of interest and enjoy the benefits of customized content.
Connect
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 15 minutes
Connect, learn, and collaborate with industry experts and save time and money by gaining insights, recommendations, and advice. Participants in the CPA LEAD Certificate Program will learn how to best engage within Connect. Connect is one of NCACPA’s most used resources and is exclusive to members!
Discussion threads range from advice on accounting-related issues, opportunities for volunteering, and arranging networking and social events.
CONNECT ALLOWS YOU TO:
- Interact and collaborate with fellow NCACPA members
- Participate in niche discussion groups
- Contribute to and learn from a professional knowledgebase
- Access documents, media, and digital libraries
- Access a comprehensive member directory
Participants will need to update the following on Connect: Profile picture, bio, and email notification settings.
CPE Programs
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 5 hours (1 hour per course)
CPE Earned with Certificate: 5 hours
By enrolling in the CPA LEAD Certificate Program, you immediately gain access to five, one-hour virtual on demand programs. The selected programs were carefully selected to deliver content that is believed to be most helpful in improving leaderships skills of CPAs.
Learn more about each On Demand program!
Topics include:
Developing Flexible & Adaptable Critical Thinking
Learn how to develop a more flexible and adaptable critical thinking style that supports higher order critical thinking and decision-making under pressure. Identify change management strategies and discover the neuroscience behind adaptation and flexibility to better understand your own unique thought process.
Catalog Code: LEAD0220
Emotional Intelligence
This session goes beyond a superficial understanding to provide a richer comprehension of emotional intelligence. Attendees will learn methods for recognizing, interpreting, and managing emotional responses in themselves and others.
Catalog Code: LEAD0420
Strategies for Making Better Decisions
Attendees will learn advanced strategies to analyze their decision-making processes and recognize ineffective thinking approaches to replace with more effective strategies. Determine how to break down your reasoning process, recognize biases in old processes, and choose amongst alternative approaches that better serve the needs of the situation.
Catalog Code: LEAD0120
Think Like A Leader
This session teaches attendees how to develop thinking strategies associated with exceptional leadership qualities. that are valuable at every level of an organization. The speaker will discuss social and organizational psychology to explain how groups learn to “think” and how norms develop in teams to create organizational culture.
Catalog Code: LEAD0320
Uncovering Your Hidden Bias
For work cultures to thrive, you must actively counteract unconscious bias. Unconscious bias decreases innovation, productivity, and creativity. Our proposed strategies offset biases so employees can confidently engage in their work.
Catalog Code: LEAD0520
What is On Demand? A self-paced format delivered at your convenience. You can view and interact with this program on your computer, laptop, or smart device in the comfort of your office or home.
Engagement Activities
Estimated time to complete: Approximately 5 minutes to 2 hours per activity (depending on activity selection)
(In-person & digital participation are both acceptable)
Choose your own path of how YOU want to engage with NCACPA!
By participating in the CPA LEAD Certificate Program, you will learn NCACPA offers so much more than continuing education. Participants have a selection of various activities that aim to get you connected.
Certificate participants can choose from the below engagement activities to complete as part of the program:
SUBMIT
Submit a blog post to the NCACPA blog.
If you would like to do so, please submit blog post to Carly Rutledge, or email her for topic suggestions.
POST
Post a new discussion on Connect platform.
PARTICIPATE
Participate in at least one social/networking event. This option will require a separate registration for your selected event and additional costs will be incurred for any non-free program.
FULFILL
Fulfill the NCACPA Volunteer 365 participation form.
To complete this form, you must participate in a volunteer activity in your community prior to submission.
RESPOND
Respond to a discussion thread on Connect.
WRITE
Write an article for the NCACPA magazine, Interim Report.
If you would like to do so, please contact Carly Rutledge for timeline of printing and topics needed.
COMPLETE
Complete the NCACPA Committee interest form.
By completing this form you are expressing interest in a long-term volunteer opportunity outside of the CPA L.E.A.D. Certificate Program.
TAKE PART
Take part in an additional NCACPA hosted online learning program.
NCACPA is giving members a FREE 50-minute ethics webcast. This online program satisfies the North Carolina 50-minute ethics requirement. Members can register for the webcast through our catalog.
ATTEND
Attend an additional NCACPA hosted in-person training program.
This option will require a separate registration for your selected event. Additional costs will be incurred to participate in in-person training courses. CPE credit may be awarded based on the course you choose. Check out our FREE Focus on the Profession sessions too!