How Continuing Education Can Enrich Your Career

For many professionals, continuing education is not really optional. Lawyers, doctors, and accountants are all required to pursue ongoing training and to renew their certifications and credentials on a regular basis—and that’s just three examples among many.

But this isn’t a post about the requirement of continuing education. It’s about the advantage of it. Just because you feel like you have to continue your education, that doesn’t mean you can’t also enjoy it and genuinely learn and grow from it, becoming more effective and more successful in your career.

Furthermore, just because you aren’t required to seek CE, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of advantages to seeking some additional training.

Everyone benefits from continuing education. Here are just a few of the ways:

• Continuing education helps you stay abreast of new trends. Your field is changing every day. That’s true almost across the board. Medical technology is always improving. The law changes every time there’s a new legislature or a new precedent-setting court case. The IRS changes its accounting standards yearly. Marketing and sales tools are ever advancing. Whatever field you’re in, there’s a good chance that it’s living, fluid, and constantly in development. Continuing education keeps you in the loop and prevents you from becoming out of date or obsolete.
• Continuing education helps you serve your customers. The more you educate yourself, the better you can understand and discuss all the issues relevant to your industry, and to offer a truly informed perspective. This is hugely advantageous to you as you seek to offer customer service and care.
• Continuing education makes you a better leader. Again, continuing education gives you perspective and true wisdom as it pertains to your industry—making you a natural candidate for leadership. Certainly, the team member who pursues ongoing education is going to be the more natural choice for a promotion than the team member who doesn’t. Career advancement aside, continuing education simply allows you to move your team forward with greater knowledge and heightened acumen.
• When you pursue continuing education, you prove that you can learn. This is no small thing; in fact, the ability to learn, develop, and take direction is one of the key skills employers look for, making this an invaluable way to position yourself for career advancement.

There’s no two ways about it: By continuing your education, you make yourself a more valuable team member; a more effective leader; and, most likely, a more successful professional. Make the most of continuing education, then—and start today!