The line between ethical and unethical behavior is becoming increasingly blurred in today’s work environment.
Recently, employees at a major accounting firm were found in violation of their ethical code for completing multiple training courses simultaneously. This raises concerns for all of us about multitasking and accountability in professional development settings, particularly as digital distractions continue to grow.
Modern workstations are set up for constant multitasking—new email notifications, Teams chats, ringing phones, and video calls often pull our attention in several directions. A 2021 Microsoft study on its employees found that people sent emails during 30% of their meetings, and around 15% felt that multitasking improved productivity. But that study is now three years old, and digital task-switching has likely only intensified. Today’s workforce faces a greater need than ever to manage tasks simultaneously, but this also brings ethical challenges, especially in structured learning environments.
For organizations that sponsor training, the pressure to ensure course attendance and active engagement has increased significantly. The National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) has clear requirements for sponsors to monitor attendance, outlined in standards like S7-01, S16-02, and S16-03. As recently as January 2024, NASBA released additional guidelines for monitoring virtual learning (S16-05). The need to closely monitor and verify active participation during training sessions is a growing burden on organizations. These standards emphasize that awarding NASBA CPE credits is a responsibility that providers take seriously to ensure they are awarded according to The Standards. This includes not just the design and development of content by accredited experts, but the enforcement of monitoring learner participation and active engagement throughout any training session.
Technology and Tools Can Be the ‘Sharpie’ We Need to Redraw the Line
Many Learning & Development (L&D) teams already have access to the data points that can identify potential overlaps in course completion times, helping to prevent situations where employees might claim continuing education credits unethically. For instance, using data points like start and end time and completion times for online learning, many systems can monitor for overlapping completions. The first step is to inventory the tools you have in place already to evaluate how they can be used to help enforce and establish the consumption of training within your organization. For example, many learning management systems can prevent registration with overlapping start times for scheduled offerings. This may require updating specific registration policy settings in your LMS to enforce this for your learners. Consider also if there is additional reporting you can put in place to manually monitor conflicting registrations and allow your team to identify and cancel learners from overlapping session registrations ahead of time.
For organizations looking for an enterprise solution that can scale to more quickly identify and prevent situations like this, a CPE compliance tool like Calculo may be the answer. Tools like Calculo can proactively monitor for applicable credit limitations such as overlapping sessions time and learners claiming more than one credit type for the same program (author and then later learner credit) – impacted by limitations defined under NASBA S20 (maximum credit awarding for instructors and reviewers) and S21-02 (authoring and instructing a single program).
Credit Limitations in Calculo is powerful, automated functionality that allows organizations to enable specific rules that are automatically enforced as data changes in the tool. For example, in the screenshot capture above the learner has received credit for the program as another role. This user instructed a class under this program, allowing them to earn more CPE credit than earned as an author. To prevent duplicative CPE awards and Certificate of Completions from being issued, Calculo has automatically limited the authoring credit and displayed a note to the administrator.
Another example is the ability to ensure Instructors are not awarded more presentation and preparation credit than allowed in S20-01 (Instructor Credit parameters). Within the workflow Calculo will ensure that no individual instructor can be awarded more than the actual duration of the module. In addition, Calculo automatically defaults the preparation credit to 2X the learner credit and allows an administrator to adjust down as required. This enforces the standards and limitations from the initial design of the program in a systemic manner.
Putting processes in place to monitor and identify occurrences where credit should be limited will be increasingly under the spotlight in accounting firms and across other highly regulated industries. Clear upfront communication is key in setting the expectations for your employees that the Company expects focused attention on any assigned training. In the short-term, the burden of oversight will most likely fall on L&D and Compliance teams, but organizations will need to leverage technology to proactively monitor compliance and lighten this load over the long-term. Businesses should begin by examining their current tools and assessing how they can support these new responsibilities.
Alongside technological solutions, we must shift the workplace mindset on multitasking. Instead of “doing many things at once,” employees should be encouraged to see multitasking as “efficiently switching between tasks based on priority.” Emphasizing this perspective can foster a more ethical and focused approach to professional learning, ultimately benefiting both employees and organizations.
Contact us to learn more about how Calculo can help enhance regulatory compliance oversight and workflow in your organization.
