You know CPD matters. You know you need to complete your hours. But when you sit down to actually plan your professional development for the year, where do you start? The sheer volume of courses, workshops, webinars, and training events available can feel overwhelming. Not all of it will be right for you, your practice, or your clients.
This guide is designed to help you cut through the noise and make CPD choices that genuinely serve your growth as a practitioner.
Start With Your Practice, Not the Prospectus
The most common mistake therapists make with CPD is browsing lists of training before they’ve reflected on what they actually need. This tends to result in choosing whatever looks interesting or convenient, which isn’t the same as choosing what will make you a better therapist.
Before you look at a single course, take some time to reflect honestly on your current practice. Ask yourself:
- Which client presentations do I find most challenging or anxiety-provoking?
- Are there areas where I feel my theoretical knowledge is thin?
- Have I turned away referrals recently because I didn’t feel equipped to work with that client group?
- What patterns am I noticing in my work that I’d like to understand better?
Your answers to these questions can form the foundation of your CPD plan. Training that directly addresses a gap in your knowledge or skill is almost always more valuable than training that covers familiar ground.
Use Supervision as a Compass
If you’re engaging well with clinical supervision you already have access to one of the best CPD planning tools available – your supervisor! A skilled supervisor will observe patterns in your case presentations that you might not see yourself, and these observations are rich with CPD direction.
Wisely you may pay particular attention when your supervisor:
- Suggests a particular theoretical lens that might help you understand a client’s presentation
- Notices that you consistently find a certain dynamic or issue difficult
- Recommends a book, paper, or approach you haven’t explored
- Points to a recurring theme across several of your clients
It’s worth keeping a simple note of these observations between sessions. Over time, they’ll reveal a clear picture of where your development energy should go.
Balance Depth and Breadth
There’s an ongoing tension in therapist CPD between going deep into one area and building broad, transferable skills. Both have value and most practitioners benefit from a mix of the two.
Depth: specialist training
Specialist CPD, in areas like trauma, eating disorders, bereavement, addiction, or working with a particular age group, can transform your practice and open up new referral streams. If you’re considering specialist work, look for training that is:
- Substantial enough to genuinely develop your competence (a single one-day workshop rarely suffices for complex areas)
- Recognised or recommended by relevant professional bodies or specialist organisations
- Delivered by practitioners with direct clinical experience in the specialism
Breadth: transferable skills
Broader CPD, such as training in reflective practice, working with diversity and difference, or understanding neuroscience, can enrich your work with all clients, not just a specific group. This kind of training often produces the most unexpected and rewarding shifts in how you think and work.
Evaluate Course Quality Before You Commit
Not all CPD is created equal. The market for therapist training is largely unregulated, which means the quality of what’s on offer varies enormously. Before booking any course, take a few minutes to assess it properly.
Questions worth asking:
- Who is delivering it? Are they a qualified, practising clinician with genuine expertise in this area, or primarily a trainer without a clinical background?
- What are the learning outcomes? Can you clearly identify what you will know or be able to do differently as a result of this training?
- What do other therapists say? Peer recommendations, from colleagues, supervision groups, or professional forums, are often the most reliable quality signal. Testimonials can be helpful to check out too.
Consider Format as Well as Content
The best course in the world won’t serve you well if the format doesn’t suit how you learn or fit around your life. Be realistic about this.
Live, in-person workshops offer immediacy, peer connection, and the opportunity to practise skills in real time. For some types of training, particularly experiential or skills-based work, there’s no substitute. However, they require travel, often cost more, and demand you to be free on a specific date. They are also becoming rare for some types of CPD in the post-CoVid world.
Online CPD has expanded dramatically in recent years and now encompasses everything from recorded on-demand modules to live interactive webinars. For many therapists, online learning offers a practical way to fit CPD around a busy caseload without compromising quality. The key is to engage actively rather than passively, watching a recording while doing the washing up is unlikely to count as meaningful professional development!
Reading and self-directed study also counts as CPD for most professional bodies and shouldn’t be underestimated. Engaging seriously with a well-chosen book or journal article, and reflecting on its implications for your practice, can be as developmental as any formal course.
Don’t Just Collect Hours, Also Reflect on What You Learn
Perhaps the most important principle in effective CPD is this: the learning happens in the reflection, not just the attendance. Many therapists tick the CPD box by logging hours without pausing to consider what those hours have actually changed in their thinking or practice.
After any CPD activity, take time to ask yourself:
- What did I learn that I didn’t know before?
- Has this changed how I think about any of my current clients?
- Is there anything I want to do differently as a result?
- What further questions has this raised for me?
Recording these reflections in your CPD log not only satisfies professional body requirements, it also consolidates the learning and makes it far more likely to actually influence your practice.
Plan Ahead, But Stay Flexible
A CPD plan doesn’t need to be a rigid document, but having some sense of direction for the year ahead can be helpful. At the start of your CPD year how about…
- Identifying two or three priority development areas based on your practice needs
- Allocating a rough budget for training (and factoring in time as well as money)
- Mixing formal courses with informal learning activities
- Building in time for reflection and log-keeping throughout the year, not just at the end
Life, and practice, changes. A new client presentation, a supervision observation, or a chance encounter with a compelling piece of research might shift your priorities mid-year. That’s fine. The point of planning is to give you a starting direction, not to lock you in.
Making the Most of Online CPD
At Therapy Education Online, we’ve designed our CPD courses with practising therapists in mind. We understand that people are busy, clinically curious, and want training that connects directly to their work with real clients. Our courses are:
- Evidence-informed: grounded in current research and clinical best practice
- Practically focused: with clear links to how the learning applies in the therapy room
- Flexible: available on demand, so you can learn at a time and pace that suits you
- Certifiable: with certificates of completion to support your CPD log
Whether you’re looking to develop a specialism, fill a knowledge gap, or simply deepen your existing practice, we’re here to support your ongoing growth as a practitioner.
Final Thoughts
Choosing the right CPD is ultimately an act of professional self-awareness. It requires you to be honest about where you are, curious about where you want to go, and discerning about the routes that will take you there. When CPD is chosen well and engaged with genuinely, it doesn’t feel like an obligation, it feels like one of the most rewarding parts of being a therapist.
Browse our full catalogue of CPD courses for therapists at therapyeducationonline.com.
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