Member Questions Answered: CPL and Audit

Each year, OPPI’s Professional Standards & Registration Committee (PS&RC) conducts an audit of the previous year’s Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) claims. It is common practice that one to two per cent of the membership is audited on an annual basis.

Why do OPPI members need to complete CPL credits?

CPL is a mandatory component of OPPI Candidate and Full membership. CPL is also a national standard in the planning profession. According to the CPL Program Guide, the program “corresponds to the planning profession’s commitment to maintaining competency on a continuous basis, as well as the public’s growing need for assurance that many professionals—planners included—remain current with contemporary theory, methods and practice within their profession.” CPL exists to demonstrate to the public that planners are capable of acting in the public interest, as required by the Professional Code of Practice. This is no different from several other regulated professions in Ontario, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and the Law Society of Ontario.

But why is an audit necessary?

The CPL audit is an important component of CPL that exists to protect the integrity of the program, and ensure members are adhering to their annual professional learning requirements. Much like the CPL program itself, the audit is consistent with several other regulated professions.

Approximately one to two per cent of OPPI’s membership is randomly selected to be audited on an annual basis. The CPL claims of those members are first audited by OPPI’s Membership Manager and Registrar, and are then shared anonymously with the PS&RC for an additional review before the results of the audit are communicated to each individual member later in the year. This year’s CPL audit focused on claims made by members for the 2021 CPL year.

What are some of the main concerns being raised by auditors?

This year, like most years, the majority of CPL claims were not problematic, however the PS&RC noted a small handful of trends that merit consideration when claiming your CPL for 2022:

Lack of specificity in individual activities being claimed. For an auditor, it can be difficult to verify the validity of a specific entry if only a few details are shared. For instance, if a member were to claim “participation on a committee”, that could certainly count towards a member’s total for the year, however this lack of specificity doesn’t indicate what the committee does. For example, is it a design awards jury, a volunteer role with a planning-adjacent organization, or a social committee? The latter is unlikely to count towards a member’s learning unit total. Members are strongly advised to provide more specific details in their individual activity claims: details such as which organization is offering an event, the author, publisher, name/role of the committee or volunteer body, etc. This will allow auditors to better determine whether the claim is valid and will mitigate the potential for those learning units to be rejected.

Conflating work responsibilities with CPL. The CPL Program Guide is very clear that duties related to a member’s day-to-day work as a professional planner cannot be claimed as learning units. For example, a member cannot claim participation in a public consultation session for a project they are working on as learning units, however if they participate in a professional development workshop put on by their employer during business hours, that could count towards their requirement. Due to a lack of specificity, auditors found several instances this year where members made claims in which it was not immediately clear whether the activity itself was related to an individual’s day-to-day work or not. Providing more detail about the activity itself is useful to mitigate this confusion and again, the potential for that claim to be rejected.

Incorrect number of learning units being claimed. Generally, one hour of learning activity is equal to one learning unit. This is specifically for learning activity, however, and not an entire event (e.g., if a member participates in an event that lasts three hours, and the event includes an hour-long networking lunch within that three-hour timeframe, a maximum of two learning units should be claimed). There are exceptions to this rule, however, such as the amount of learning units a member may claim for their volunteer work on a committee, the amount of learning units that may be claimed when reading a professional book or publication, and the amount of learning units that may be claimed for participation in a full-day activity. Once again, the CPL Program Guide is a very useful tool to determine how many learning units may be claimed for certain activities. If, after reviewing the Program Guide you are still unable to find an answer to your question, please don’t hesitate to contact OPPI’s Registrar.

How does the audit process work?

After the CPL reporting period closes and all administrative work has concluded, the Registrar produces a list, at random, of one to two percent of Full and Candidate members. The Registrar will review the list of members to ensure that there are no repeats of members who were audited in the previous year, and who were found to have no issues with their CPL report. Once the list is complete, OPPI’s Membership Manager reviews each individual claim for each member and flags any entries that don’t align with the CPL Program Guide or are otherwise questionable. The full list is then reviewed line-by-line a second time by the Registrar, who adds further commentary.

After the Registrar’s review, all names are removed from the audit list to ensure anonymity and to eliminate bias on the part of the PS&RC when they complete their third and final review. Comments are provided by the PS&RC directly to the Registrar, who communicates the individual results directly to the members being audited.

In instances where there are no significant findings, members are advised of such. These members are not re-audited the next year. In instances where there are some findings, those members are also advised, and provided with specific details about the findings of their individual claims. These members are subject to a re-audit the following year.

Since the CPL requirement became mandatory in 2014, the process has never resulted in cancellation of a member’s learning units; rather, the process has been used to educate members on how to improve their claims to ensure their validity.

Are there any changes coming?

Beginning with the 2022 CPL audit , a revised process will be used by the PS&RC, which will provide the committee with the ability to cancel learning units, if they deem it necessary. As with previous audits, the PS&RC will identify claims which they believe are invalid or questionable, and OPPI will follow up with those members who will be re-audited the following year.

If, upon re-audit, those members’ claims are still found to be questionable or invalid, the PS&RC may opt to advise the member that a certain claim is invalid and offer them the opportunity to provide a corrected or alternative claim. If the member refuses, they may become subject to the CPL penalty fee. If the member also refuses to pay the penalty fee, they may become ineligible to renew their membership.

Much like the process used to this point, member education is the first priority, and will remain the first step in the CPL audit process. It is only in the instance of a re-audit that this revised process would be used.

Since CPL became a mandatory component of Full and Candidate membership in 2014, OPPI members have been extremely diligent in meeting their annual requirements; the compliance rate has always been in above 95 per cent. This reflects very well on members’ commitment to upholding and serving the public interest and accordingly, and members ought to be commended.

Here’s a recap of how the audit process works