Do I need Ethics Continuing Education (CE)? 

If you are a CFP^® professional, the answer is: Yes, at least once every two years. If you are licensed insurance agent, the answer (in 40 states) is: Yes, before you renew your license.  Not only is Ethics CE a mandatory part of keeping your license to use the CFP^® marks and supportive of your status as a highly trusted professional, it is also an integral part of understanding how to meet any fiduciary and regulatory duties.

Why Choose THESE Ethics courses?

For CFP^® professionals, the Ethics course is mandatory.  Written by the CFP^® Board of Standards, it contains pre-defined learning objectives with narrowly defined and largely scripted content.  For those vetted and trained professionals willing to deliver the course, there isn't much room to maneuver.  It takes significant presentation skill and extreme familiarity with the content to gain the Boards' education team comfort incorporating learning innovations.   Your choice isn’t really what ethics course to take.  Your choice is who to receive the content from.  Melissa’s course delivery is interactive, contextual and meaningful.  It is the difference between two hours of your time to “check the box” or two hours of your time that fulfills a requirement AND facilitates your use of the Code and Standards as a tool (and toolkit) to consider and review your financial planning practice norms.

For insurance license holders, the Good People. Bad Things ethics course challenges your personal Ethics awareness and offers some tools in support of proactively ethically aware decision making. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of what your own personal code of conduct might be, how it might differ from others’, how it can shift and adjust in various cultural climates and regulatory environments. You will identify the most common types of insurance fraud and explore how they connect to identified thinking patterns most often associated with ethical mistakes.   Another eye opening exercise links stressors to decision making - examining seemingly ordinary decisions at ethical tipping points. This knowledge can help you raise your Ethical awareness, and become a better producer/owner/boss/supervisor.  Building and nurturing an ethical culture within your firm and office, you can possibly predict, and thus proactively identify and avoid "sticky people situations" that have the potential to jeopardize your practice and your reputation.

About Melissa

Melissa Kemp, CFP^®, AEP^®, CAP^®, CNAP^® currently serves as the contract Executive Director for the Financial Planning Association of Greater Phoenix.  Prior to accepting the Executive Director role in 2015, Melissa had been a chapter member since 2000.

Melissa is the founder and owner of Premium Organization, an Association Management Company, launched in 2000. Premium Organization provides administrative solutions for many nonprofit organizations, including 501(C)(3), (C)(4), and (C)(6) type entities. Melissa knows how to deliver quality programming under a nonprofit umbrella.

She also owns Premium Administration, LLC, a third-party administrator for trustees of Irrevocable Trusts. As a trust administrator of complex estate planning documents with high dollar values, she understands the rigor and exactitude required of financial planning professionals and the critical value of a highly regarded reputation.

In 2021, Melissa is serving as a Hearing Panel Volunteer by the CFP® Board of Standards Disciplinary and Ethics Commission. The Hearing Panel is responsible for overseeing and processing 2021 disciplinary actions.

The Path Toward Quality Ethics Content and Delivery

In 2017, Melissa developed a fun and interactive Ethics course titled "A Pragmatic Walk Through the Ethical Looking Glass". This course quickly became popular with CFP® professionals, because it incorporated gamification and competition via learning tools like Kahoot! and utilized authentic Anonymous Case Histories from the Disciplinary Ethics Commission. Among the continuing feedback from professionals taking the course, many noted it was the first time an approved Ethics course actually delivered on every required learning objective and carved out time for useful ethics discussions.

In 2018, when the CFP® Board of Standards elected to produce its own new Ethics Course in advance of rolling out the new practice standards, Melissa served on the Ethics Work Group volunteering time and talent to shape the new course. Much of her early work proving that fun and interactive courses were possible and could meet the Ethics Learning Objectives opened a path for the final course to integrate many concepts from the Pragmatic Walk Through the Ethical Looking Glass.

Melissa's intention is to update the Pragmatic Walk Ethics course based upon the 2021 Ethics Learning Objectives and seek approval to offer it again as an alternative to the mandatory Ethics course content at some point in the future.  For now, though, she endeavors to deliver their content exceptionally well.