CCEP, or Certified Compliance & Ethics Professional, is an individual professional certification administered by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) through the same accreditation body that issues HCCA’s healthcare credentials, the Compliance Certification Board (CCB)®. SCCE and HCCA are sister associations under CCB, and CCEP is best understood as CCB’s general, industry-agnostic compliance-and-ethics credential — the counterpart to CHPC (healthcare privacy), CHRC (healthcare research compliance), and CHC (general healthcare compliance), which are all scoped to healthcare settings.
For research administration and research-compliance staff, CCEP is a less obvious fit than the healthcare-specific CCB credentials, and that is the point of this page: CCEP certifies the mechanics of running a compliance-and-ethics program in any industry — corporate, higher education, government, or nonprofit — rather than research-specific regulatory content. This guide covers what CCEP actually tests, what it takes to earn and maintain it, and where it does and doesn’t fit into a research compliance career compared with HCCA/CCB’s healthcare-scoped credentials.
What the CCEP credential covers
CCEP certifies competency across the operational domains of running an organization-wide compliance and ethics program. Reporting aggregated from SCCE/CCB candidate materials and third-party credentialing summaries describes the exam content outline as spanning: standards, policies, and codes of conduct; compliance program administration and resources; compliance training and education; auditing and monitoring; risk assessment; reporting mechanisms and enforcement of standards; and investigations and response to misconduct.
That is a close structural mirror of what CHC and CHPC test — unsurprising, since all three sit under the same CCB umbrella and reflect the same generic compliance-program lifecycle (write policy, train the workforce, monitor and audit, investigate, enforce). The difference is scope, not structure: CCEP’s content and case scenarios are written for a general enterprise compliance function, not a healthcare covered entity or a research portfolio specifically. A university research compliance office, a corporate ethics-and-compliance department, and a nonprofit’s compliance function could all reasonably send a staff member for CCEP; a hospital privacy office or a healthcare-focused research compliance office is more likely to be better served by CHPC or CHRC respectively.
Eligibility, exam format, and maintenance
The figures below are drawn from SCCE/CCB candidate materials and corroborating third-party credentialing summaries, not independently re-verified against a directly-fetched primary-source page this session (SCCE’s own certification pages returned an access-blocked response to automated fetch at time of writing) — treat the specifics as generally reliable but confirm current numbers directly at corporatecompliance.org/certification/become-certified/ccep before relying on them for an application or budget decision:
- Eligibility: commonly reported as roughly two years of compliance-or-ethics-related work experience, or an alternative pathway of a documented block of relevant continuing education (commonly cited around 30 hours) completed within a recent multi-year window for candidates without the full work-experience history. SCCE/HCCA membership is not required to sit for or maintain a CCB certification.
- Exam: reported as a timed, multiple-choice exam (commonly cited around 115 questions, a portion of which are unscored pretest items, within a roughly two-hour window), covering the seven domains described above.
- Fee: reported in the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars, with a lower rate for SCCE/HCCA members and a reduced re-exam fee within the eligibility window, consistent with CCB’s other individual certifications.
- Recertification: reported as a roughly two-year cycle requiring a substantial block of continuing education units tied to the exam’s domain areas (commonly cited around 40 CEUs per cycle), the same pattern CCB applies across its certification family.
Because CCB periodically revises eligibility pathways, question counts, and fees, treat any number above as directional rather than exact, and confirm current requirements directly with SCCE/CCB before applying. SCCE also offers CCEP-I, a parallel credential built around international and cross-border compliance-program content, which is a distinct exam and content outline from the domestic CCEP covered here.
Why a research compliance professional would pursue CCEP
CCEP is not a research-specific credential, and for most IRB coordinators, protocol regulatory staff, or clinical trial coordinators, a research-specific credential will match day-to-day duties more directly. It becomes genuinely relevant, rather than merely adjacent, in a narrower set of situations:
- Research compliance roles embedded in a broader institutional compliance office. At many universities, research compliance sits inside (or reports into) a general institutional compliance-and-ethics function that also covers conflicts of interest, export controls, Title IX, and general misconduct reporting channels. CCEP signals command of that general compliance-program infrastructure — policy, training, hotline/reporting mechanisms, investigations — in a way a purely research- or healthcare-scoped credential does not.
- Non-healthcare research settings. CHC and CHPC are built around healthcare-covered-entity operations. A research administrator at a non-medical university, a government research agency, or an industry R&D function whose compliance obligations are not primarily HIPAA-driven will find CCEP’s generalist content a closer match than the healthcare-specific CCB credentials.
- Career positioning toward a general compliance-officer or chief compliance officer track. CCEP is widely recognized outside research and healthcare entirely, which matters for staff who may move between research administration and broader institutional or corporate compliance roles over a career.
CCEP compared with CHC and CHPC
All three credentials are issued by the same accreditation body, CCB, and share a broadly similar eligibility/exam/renewal structure. What differs is the industry scope the exam content and case scenarios are written for:
| Dimension | CCEP | CHC | CHPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issuing association | SCCE (via CCB) | HCCA (via CCB) | HCCA (via CCB) |
| Industry scope | General / industry-agnostic compliance and ethics | General healthcare compliance | Healthcare privacy (principally HIPAA) |
| Typical holder | Corporate, university, government, or nonprofit compliance officer | Healthcare compliance officer across a covered entity | Healthcare privacy officer |
| Exam domain focus | Policy/code of conduct, program administration, training, auditing/monitoring, risk assessment, reporting/enforcement, investigations | Same domain lifecycle, applied to healthcare regulatory compliance generally | Same domain lifecycle, applied specifically to HIPAA privacy-program operations |
| Renewal cycle | ~2 years, CEU-based | ~2 years, CEU-based | ~2 years, CEU-based |
| Best fit for a research compliance office | Non-healthcare institutions, or research offices nested inside a general institutional compliance function | Healthcare-affiliated institutions wanting broad healthcare-compliance coverage rather than research- or privacy-specific depth | Institutions where privacy-program ownership (HIPAA policy, auditing, vendor/BA management) sits with the research-compliance team |
None of the three tests research-specific mechanisms — human subjects protection, IRB operations, research billing compliance, or grants management — in any depth. For a research compliance office whose work is centered on those mechanisms specifically, HCCA’s own CHRC (Certified in Healthcare Research Compliance) or PRIM&R/CCIP’s CIP (Certified IRB Professional) will generally be the closer match than any of the three credentials in the table above; see the CHPC guide for how CHPC, CHRC, CIP, and SOCRA’s CCRP relate to one another for research-specific roles.
Where CCEP fits in a research compliance career path
In practice, CCEP tends to appear in research-adjacent careers in one of two patterns: as a first, general compliance credential for someone entering a research compliance office that reports into (or works closely with) a general institutional compliance-and-ethics function, before adding a research-specific credential later; or as a second credential added by a research compliance professional whose responsibilities have broadened to include general institutional compliance work — conflicts of interest, hotline/reporting-mechanism oversight, code-of-conduct administration — alongside research-specific duties. It is a less common choice for someone whose role is exclusively IRB coordination or clinical trial regulatory support, where a research-specific credential more directly matches the job.
Frequently asked questions
Is CCEP the right certification for a research administrator?
Only if the role involves meaningful ownership of general, institution-wide compliance-program operations — policy and code of conduct, training, auditing, reporting/hotline mechanisms, investigations — rather than research-specific regulatory work. If the role is IRB coordination, protocol-level regulatory support, or clinical trial coordination, a research-specific credential such as CIP, CCRP/CCRA, or CHRC is typically the closer fit.
Does CCEP require SCCE or HCCA membership?
No. Membership in SCCE or its sister association HCCA is not required to sit for or maintain a CCB certification, though members typically pay a reduced exam fee.
How is CCEP different from CHC?
Both are CCB credentials issued through sister associations (SCCE for CCEP, HCCA for CHC) and share a similar domain structure, but CHC’s content outline is built specifically around healthcare regulatory compliance, while CCEP’s is industry-agnostic. An institution whose compliance obligations are not primarily healthcare-driven will generally find CCEP the closer match; a healthcare covered entity will generally find CHC closer.
Can someone hold both CCEP and a healthcare- or research-specific CCB credential?
Yes. Holding CCEP alongside CHPC, CHRC, or CHC is a recognized pattern for compliance professionals whose responsibilities span both a general institutional compliance function and a healthcare- or research-specific one, since the credentials test genuinely different scope rather than duplicating each other.
Is there an international version of CCEP?
Yes. SCCE offers CCEP-I, a separate credential and exam built around international and cross-border compliance-program content, distinct from the domestic CCEP covered on this page.
