Successful Skill Development

The Vancouver Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is committed to you, the membership. As such, we are continuously innovating to provide relevant and timely professional educational training and resources. Recently I had a member ask how to keep learning fraud investigation skills while working full time with a young family. I advised making continuous skill development just part of life like putting on socks and eating dinner.

First, determine what you want to learn. If you are new to fraud investigations, maybe focus on basic skills including interviewing and report writing. If you are more advanced, then maybe consider learning the basics of digital forensics, data analytics or cyber security. There are so many possibilities and they don’t have to be fraud investigation related. This same process applies to learning anything, just keep learning…

Basic Skill Development Rules:

Time – Dedicate time for skill development. Start with one hour a week or some measure of time that will not interfere with your current lifestyle.

Persistence – New skill development takes a consistent effort, and this is another reason to start with a small-time commitment.

Patience – Any new skill development takes time so be patient and celebrate the process.

Appropriate – Develop skills just beyond your current ability. Don’t set the bar too high as this will add additional stress to the skill development process.

 Most people tend to be too ambitious with their skill development goals which causes a great deal of stress and increases the likelihood of failure. Start small and build on your successes.

 Many of the online learning platforms help you with this skill development process as well. Futurelearn for example breaks the courses down into hours per week. So, an introduction to cyber security course might be eight weeks long but only two hours each week.  

If you are interested in speaking at one of our Chapter events or submitting an article for our monthly newsletter or weekly fraud insights post, please contact me directly anytime at [email protected]. Lastly, I encourage everyone to make continuous learning a part of their lives and wish you all the very best during the coming year.

Most sincerely,

Steve Wilson