From Board Insights, Episode 1, featuring Catrice Opichka, Director of CARE Programs, CRDTS
Most remediation plans include some form of continuing education. The rationale is reasonable on its face – a licensee who violated a standard probably needs structured exposure to the thinking behind it, and CE is how that exposure gets delivered. But CE and ethics assessment are not two versions of the same tool. They answer different questions.
What You Know vs. What You Would Do
The cleanest way to describe the distinction is by what each tool measures. CE measures what a licensee knows – whether they encountered the material, completed the coursework, and can identify the right answer when it is presented to them. An assessment measures what a licensee would do – how they actually reason through a scenario when they have to construct the response themselves.
Catrice Opichka describes what CE can and cannot do in her own program:
“You can’t really teach ethics, but it does get them in an ethical mindset that kind of allows them to dig into those pieces of their understanding of ethics and how they would handle these scenarios.”
CE can prepare a licensee to engage with ethical questions. It cannot demonstrate that the licensee will actually reason through them correctly when the situation is in front of them.
Her team uses the two tools in sequence for exactly that reason:
“We want them to get into that ethical mindset before they go into that examination. We find that it really benefits them in that exam situation.”
CE is preparation. Assessment is the measurement of what preparation produces. One does not replace the other.
Put another way: CE answers Did they attend? An assessment answers Did they understand?
What the Record Actually Shows
The distinction becomes consequential when a case returns to the board for review. A licensee reoffends. A decision gets challenged. An outcome draws public scrutiny. In each of those moments, the remediation file becomes part of the defensibility question, and what the file contains matters more than that it is complete.
A file showing completed CE tells a story about what the licensee was offered. The board gave them access to the material. They attended. The coursework closed.
A file showing measured reasoning tells a story about what the licensee actually demonstrated. Asked to apply ethical reasoning to a scenario relevant to their profession, they produced this response, graded against this rubric, by these evaluators. The file is evidence of judgment, not just evidence of exposure.
Both files are legitimate records. Only one answers the question that comes up when a case goes wrong.
CE Alone Leaves the Question Half-Answered
None of this argues against CE. CE does what it does, and it does it well enough that most boards will keep ordering it – correctly. The argument is narrower: ethics cannot be memorized, it must be measured. CE measures exposure. Only assessment measures reasoning. A remediation plan that uses only one of those tools is answering only half the question the board is there to answer.
About Board Insights
Board Insights is a recurring conversation series from EBAS featuring practitioners working in regulatory enforcement, remediation, and licensee oversight. Each episode explores practical questions boards face and the patterns that experienced professionals see across cases.
Watch the full episode with Catrice Opichka
