Colorado CPA CPE Requirements: How Many Hours, By When
How much continuing professional education a Colorado CPA actually needs — sourced the same way every fact on this site is: a board page, plus the codified rule itself where we could confirm it against primary law, clearly labelled where we could only confirm it against the board's own page, never a guess.
- 4 ethics hours, within that same total.
Rule 1.9(G)(2) of the current 3 CCR 705-1 (entire rule re-adopted and renumbered eff. 06/30/2022; the edition in force as of 2026-09-01 carries amendments through 12/15/2024): a certificate holder must complete 10 hours of CPE for each full quarter of active licensure during the reporting period (10 x 8 quarters = the 80-hour, 2-year figure the Board's own page states in plain English). Rule 1.9(G)(2)(b) is the ethics sub-clause: 'Four hours of CPE must be in Ethics, of which two hours may be in CR&R' -- CR&R (Colorado Rules and Regulations) is defined at Rule 1.1(B) as CPE covering C.R.S. 12-100-101 through 130 and 13-90-107(1)(f) plus the Board's Rules and Policies, with the Board's content outline at Rule 1.10(H). Rule 1.10 is the CPE rule proper (standards, fields of study, reporting) and cross-references 1.9(G)(2) as the operative hours/ethics requirement. Citation-drift warning: the pre-2022 edition of these rules carried the identical clause at Rule 1.6(G)(2)(b) (CPE proper was 1.7, professional conduct was 1.9), and that superseded edition is still served by the SOS site under its old ruleVersionId, so a '1.6(G)(2)' citation resolves to real text and still reads verbatim -- it is just a superseded numbering. No more than 20% of CPE may be in personal development, and no more than 50% in any combination of teaching/publishing. No explicit single-year minimum is stated -- the requirement accrues per-quarter continuously, not as a distinct annual floor like several other states in this cluster.
What does it cost to reinstate a lapsed Colorado license? →