When the CFA Institute, an association for finance professionals, was looking to revamp the educational products in its CFA Program, it took a two-prong approach to making improvements.

First, the learning experience team in charge of the reboot incorporated the standards of the Assessment-Based Certificate Accreditation Program (ACAP), which uses the ICE 1100 Standard as the benchmark for training-based personnel certificate programs. The CFA Institute wanted to aim high from the outset and track with ACAP guidelines on best practices and program rigor.

“By understanding and following the ideals set out by the ACAP standardsthe resulting product improves,” says Bobbi Losee Vernon, the CFA Institute’s learning experience designer. “The standards act as the wrapper for industry best practices for our educational products.”

But that was “just the jumping-off point,” says Vernon. Design thinking principles were baked in with the ICE 1100 Standards, which call for:

• periodic review of the components of a certificate program by subject matter experts
• program evaluations to assess quality and effectiveness and implement future improvements
• content, design, and delivery of the education appropriate to the intended learning outcomes
• assessing participants’ accomplishment
• modifying the education or training as needed to ensure that it incorporates changes in the purpose, scope, or content of the certificate program and reflects current instructional design principles

Applying Design Thinking

Design thinking revolves around listening to your customers. By understanding the needs of individuals before the design work began, CFA Institute incorporated customer empathy to deliver high-quality programs that meet learners’ needs while delivering intended learning objectives.

“The customer journey not only captures the spectrum of learning interactions with our organization, it also identifies learners’ pain points and where there are opportunities to improve our products,” Vernon says. “Moving to a human-centered approach means we have more work on the front end of a project—interviewing learners, ideating and creating low-fidelity prototypes, doing ethnographic research.”

Think about all the times you’ve completed a project, only to find out that it missed the mark. The process we use helps us avoid those costly mistakes.
—Bobbi Losee Vernon, CFA Institute

For Vernon, who took all this rich data and analyzed it before the start of program development, the extra work was worth it. She calls it “slowing down to speed up.”

“Think about all the times you’ve completed a project, only to find out that it missed the mark,” Vernon says. “The process we use helps us avoid those costly mistakes.”

Using standards to inspire innovation and change can be a lengthy but rewarding process. Learning from others who have charted a successful course in the association community is a good start. Vernon also shares a few of her insights:

Don’t settle for good. Standards are a great starting point, but don’t stop there. Vernon applied design thinking to create learning experiences that users wanted.

Be patient. It can take a while to adjust to design thinking, and it takes time to listen. Vernon thinks it’s the most valuable time invested. “Listening to customers upfront and incorporating design thinking principles into the process was a game changer for us. This model allows for feedback on the fly and allows us to determine if our product is hitting the mark during the building process—not after implementation.”

To accredit or not? Yes, accreditation of credentialing (personnel certificate and certification) programs can involve time and expense. However, if the goal is to create a quality program and the standards inspire that endeavor, why not go for the brass ring? By getting accredited, you can demonstrate to your stakeholders that a third party has examined your program and confirms its high quality.