Ethics and Professional Skills Module (EPSM)
What is the EPSM?
The Ethics and Professional Skills Module (EPSM) is an essential part of the ACCA Qualification. It's designed to develop the full spectrum of advanced ethical and professional skills that employers are looking for. This module will expose you to realistic business situations and help you develop the professional judgment and behavior required of a qualified accountant.
Why is it important?
Completing the EPSM is not just a requirement; it provides you with a distinct advantage:
- Boosts Employability: It demonstrates to employers that you understand the importance of ethics and professionalism in the workplace.
- Enhances Exam Performance: The skills learned in the module are directly applicable to the Strategic Professional exams, increasing your chances of success.
- Prepares You for the Real World: It equips you with practical skills like leadership, communication, and commercial acumen.
Module Structure
The module is interactive and covers 10 units in six key areas:
- Ethics and professionalism
- Personal effectiveness
- Innovation and scepticism
- Commercial awareness
- Leadership and teamwork
- Communication
You will need to complete the module before you can be admitted as an ACCA member. We recommend completing it before you sit for your Strategic Professional exams.
Frequently Asked Questions
Finance professionals need to demonstrate that they understand and can apply ethical and professional behavior in real-world work situations. The EPSM helps you develop these practical real-world skills so you can make an impact from day one in organizations.
The module has 10 units, with 7 learning units and 3 assessment and support units. For more information on the syllabus and structure read our EPSM syllabus guide.
Just like our exams, we regularly update the module so it contains all the latest ethical, professional and digital skills needed by finance professionals today. This means there may have been new units added to the module since you completed it and received your completion certificate. Should this be the case your completion bar may fall below 100%, but this does not impact your completion status and it is not compulsory for you to complete any new content added to the module. However, you will be able access this new content should you wish to keep your skills up-to-date.
The module takes approximately 15 hours to complete and you are able to access any of the module content again once completed if you wish to refresh your knowledge.
The module will also support you to exam success at Strategic Professional. We therefore recommend you complete the module towards the end of completing your Applied Skills exams and before attempting any Strategic Professional exams.
The module helps you to develop the professional skills you need to demonstrate in your Strategic Professional exams. It helps focus your thinking on real world work scenarios, developing your understanding and skills on how to approach the challenges presented. This is very similar to the approach you'll be required to take at Strategic Professional exams.
Professional skills are specific skills that you generally acquire through work-place experience – for example team-working, communication, negotiation ability.
As a result of the changing business landscape globally, employers are looking for finance professionals to add value immediately. So to have technical knowledge, skills and abilities – combined with professional skills and qualities – will be much more in demand by employers.
There are a series of tests throughout the module and the final unit of the module is an assessment which you will need to pass. If you don’t pass first time, then you will get feedback and you can try again until you are successful – without having to pay any additional fees.
There is a one off cost for the module, with no resit fees. Once a student has paid for the module they will be able to do the assessment multiple times and have unlimited access to the module content.
No, however EPSM will support your learning for Strategic Professional exams so we would still recommend that you take the EPSM if you have any of these exams yet to complete.
- You will receive a Certificate of achievement. And you will also be given a personalized dashboard of your performance in the end of unit assessment and a transcript showing the skills you will have demonstrated throughout the module.
- You'll have completed one of the three key requirements towards ACCA membership (the others being exams and experience).
- As you work through the module, you'll be asked to complete different tasks which you would expect to see in a real-world work scenario. You'll be able to save these outputs in your ‘My portfolio’ section of the module. You can then use these to present to your employer – or in an interview situation – to demonstrate how you would approach and resolve these real-world scenarios. You could also share them with your PER mentor to demonstrate achievement towards your performance objectives.