Quick reference Development objectives are the planned outcomes for your CPD year — what you intend to achieve, not what you intend to do. Each objective maps to CGMA competency areas and is assigned to a quarter. Objectives are the primary unit on the CIMA Professional Development Record Form. Members in Practice must include at least one AML compliance objective.
4.1 Objectives vs activities — what’s the difference?
This is the question most users have when they first encounter CPDFlow.
An objective is a development outcome — something you want to be able to do, know, or demonstrate at the end of the year. It answers: what will be different about me as a result of this development?
An activity is the work you do to achieve that outcome — a course, a reading programme, a mentoring relationship. It answers: what will I actually do?
A single objective typically has multiple activities behind it. An objective like “Develop intermediate-level data analytics skills” might involve an online course, a series of practical exercises, reading two books, and attending an internal workshop.
CIMA’s Professional Development Record Form is structured around objectives, not activities. Each objective on the form requires a description of the development need, the planned approach, the learning undertaken, and a reflection. CPDFlow captures all of this — but at the objective level, not the activity level. Your activities and their reflections feed into the objective’s overall record.
4.2 What makes a good objective
A useful development objective has three qualities:
It describes an outcome, not a task. “Attend an IFRS 17 training course” is an activity. “Understand and be able to explain the key measurement differences between IFRS 4 and IFRS 17” is an objective. The distinction matters because the CIMA form asks what you aimed to achieve, not what you signed up for.
It is achievable within the cycle. An objective that spans five years is not a useful annual planning unit. Scope it to something that can be meaningfully progressed in 12 months.
It maps to a gap. The most defensible objectives are those that directly address a gap identified in your competency self-assessment. This does not mean objectives must be gap-driven — career aspirations, role requirements, and emerging priorities all generate legitimate objectives — but gap-driven objectives create a clear audit narrative from assessment → objective → activities → reflection.
4.3 Creating an objective
Go to Objectives in the sidebar and select + New Objective.
Required fields
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | A short, descriptive name for the objective |
| Description | The development need and planned approach — this feeds directly into the CIMA form. Plain text, max 3,000 characters. |
| Quarter | Which quarter this objective is primarily assigned to (Q1–Q4) |
| Status | Defaults to Not Started |
Optional fields
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Competency areas | Link to one or more CGMA competencies this objective addresses. Drives gap tracking and the competency coverage summary. |
| Priority | High / Medium / Low — for your own planning purposes |
| Target date | A more specific target than the quarter, if useful |
| AML compliance | Tick if this objective relates to Anti-Money Laundering compliance (required for Members in Practice — see Section 4.5) |
The description field and the CIMA form: The CIMA Professional Development Record Form asks for the “development need and planned approach” for each objective, with a 3,000 character limit. The description field in CPDFlow maps directly to this. Write it as you would want it to appear on the form — clear, specific, in plain English. The character counter shows how much space remains.
4.4 Objective statuses
Objectives progress through a lifecycle as the year unfolds:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not Started | Planned for a future quarter — work hasn’t begun |
| In Progress | Actively being worked on — activities are underway |
| Completed | The objective has been achieved |
| Deferred | Postponed to a later quarter (managed through quarterly reviews) |
| Cancelled | No longer being pursued — reason recorded |
You can update the status directly on an objective, or statuses are updated automatically as part of your quarterly review dispositions.
4.5 Members in Practice — AML compliance objective
If your profile is set to Member in Practice (MiP), CIMA requires at least one AML (Anti-Money Laundering) compliance development objective in your CPD record.
When creating an objective, tick the AML compliance checkbox if the objective relates to AML. CPDFlow tracks AML coverage and will flag if no AML objective exists when you approach cycle close.
What counts as an AML objective? Any development activity that keeps your knowledge of anti-money laundering requirements current and relevant to your practice. This might be: attending an AML update course, reviewing the latest CCAB AML guidance, participating in a professional body webinar on regulatory changes. The key is that it is purposeful, documented, and specific to AML — not a general compliance activity.
4.6 Assigning objectives to quarters
Each objective is assigned a primary quarter (Q1–Q4). This is used to:
- Organise the quarterly review — objectives assigned to the current quarter are reviewed at each review
- Balance your development plan across the year
- Provide structure for the plan snapshot comparison
Quarter assignment is not a strict commitment — an objective can run across multiple quarters, and you can reassign it during a quarterly review. It is primarily a planning and review tool.
Hours allocation: When setting up your cycle, you can allocate an hours budget per quarter. The objective quarter assignment helps you distribute planned development effort across the year and avoid front- or back-loading.
4.7 Linking objectives to competency areas
When you create or edit an objective, you can link it to one or more CGMA competency areas. This creates a connection between your development plan and your self-assessment.
Linking competencies:
- Shows which parts of the framework your development plan addresses
- Feeds the competency coverage summary on the dashboard and cycle detail
- Provides context for the CIMA form — CIMA expects development objectives to be grounded in competency development
You are not required to link every objective to a competency. Some objectives are role-specific or compliance-driven and may not map cleanly to a single framework area.
4.8 Viewing and managing objectives
The Objectives page shows all objectives in the selected cycle, grouped by status or quarter.
From this page you can:
- Filter by quarter, status or competency area
- See at a glance which objectives have linked activities and which do not
- Open any objective to view its full detail, linked activities and history
Objective detail
The objective detail page shows:
- The full description and all fields
- Linked activities — what you have done to work towards this objective
- Competency areas linked
- Status history — transitions recorded through quarterly reviews
- Disposition notes from each quarterly review
4.9 Objectives created from the Inbox
When you promote an Inbox item to a new activity, you link that activity to an existing objective. If no existing objective is appropriate, you can create a new one at the same time.
This is a common workflow for ad-hoc learning that reveals an unexpected development gap — you capture the item in the Inbox, and when reviewing it, realise it represents a new area worth formalising as an objective.
4.10 Objectives and quarterly reviews
Objectives are reviewed at each quarterly review. See Chapter 8 — Quarterly Reviews for the full review process.
In brief: at each review, you give every objective a disposition — Continue, Completed, Deferred, or Cancelled. These dispositions update the objective’s status and create a record of the decision. The plan snapshot created at each review preserves the state of all objectives at that point in time.
What’s next?
With objectives created, the next step is to start logging the activities that work towards them. See Chapter 5 — Activities.
If you want to capture learning as it happens — articles, links, ad-hoc insights — before deciding where they belong, see Chapter 6 — The Inbox.