CBTA and EBT: Moving From Compliance to Competence, and From Competence to Evidence

In regulated industries, training often begins with a very practical question:

What are we required to cover?

There are regulations to satisfy, mandatory subjects to include, recurrent training requirements to meet, records to maintain, and audits to prepare for.

And there is a good reason for that.

In aviation, compliance is not optional.

But being compliant and being competent are not necessarily the same thing.

A training program can cover every required topic. An employee can attend every required session. The records can be complete. The assessment can be passed.

And we can still ask:

Can this person actually perform the job competently when it matters?

That is where Competency-Based Training and Assessment (CBTA) changes the conversation.

Instead of stopping at:

“What are we required to cover?”

CBTA asks:

“What must this person be able to do?”

And Evidence-Based Training (EBT) takes the conversation one step further:

“What does the evidence tell us they need to get better at?”

For an instructional designer, those are not small changes in wording.

They change the way we think about training.

CBTA: From Covering Topics to Developing Competence

Competency-Based Training and Assessment begins with the functions people perform and the competencies required to perform those functions effectively.

That distinction matters.

In a traditional compliance-driven approach, the regulation or standard may provide a list of subjects that need to be covered.

Naturally, those subjects become the structure of the training.

1. Topic 1

2. Topic 2

3. Topic 3

4. Assessment

5. Certificate

6. Done

CBTA asks us to look at the requirement from another direction.

• What does the person actually do in their job?

• What knowledge, skills, and attitudes are required to do it?

• What does competent performance look like?

• What observable behaviors would demonstrate that competence?

• And how can we create learning and assessment that allow the person to demonstrate it?

The issue is not that required content becomes unimportant.

It remains important.

The difference is that covering the content is no longer the final destination. Competent performance is.

Dangerous Goods Is a Good Example

Dangerous goods training provides a useful aviation example because the shift is easy to see.

Historically, dangerous goods training was structured around personnel categories. People assigned to a particular category were trained according to the subjects prescribed for that category.

With the move toward CBTA, the emphasis shifted toward the functions an individual actually performs.

That changes the training design conversation.

Instead of simply asking:

“Which category does this employee belong to?”

We need to understand:

“What functions does this person actually perform, and what competencies are required to perform them safely and correctly?”

Two employees working in the same organization may not require identical training simply because they both interact with dangerous goods.

Their functions may be different.

Their responsibilities may be different.

Their required level of proficiency may be different.

And therefore, their training needs may be different.

This is where CBTA becomes much more than a different way of organizing a syllabus.

It connects training to the work.

CBTA Is Not Only for Recurrent Training

This is an important distinction because CBTA is sometimes associated mainly with recurrent training.

But CBTA itself is not limited to recurrent training.

It can be applied to both initial and recurrent training.

That makes sense when we think about what CBTA is trying to accomplish.

For someone entering a role, the objective is to develop the competencies needed to perform that role.

For someone already performing the role, the objective may be to maintain, strengthen, update, or reassess those competencies.

The stage of training changes.

The competency-based principle does not.

Dangerous goods training demonstrates this clearly: competency-based approaches can be used for employees learning their functions initially as well as experienced employees completing recurrent training.

So where does EBT fit?

That is where the distinction becomes important.

EBT: Let the Evidence Influence What We Train

Evidence-Based Training has a specific meaning within aviation.

The formal ICAO EBT framework was developed for the recurrent assessment and training of flight crews. It uses operational and training evidence to help determine where recurrent training should place its emphasis.

That word—evidence—is important.

Because recurrent training can easily fall into a familiar pattern.

We trained this last year.

We are required to train it again this year.

So we deliver it again.

EBT challenges that pattern by asking:

• What is actually happening in operations?

• Where are crews experiencing difficulty?

• What types of events are occurring?

• Which competencies are contributing to successful outcomes?

• Where are vulnerabilities appearing?

• What does the available evidence tell us deserves greater attention?

Training priorities can then be informed by operational reality rather than being based only on what has traditionally been included in the program.

Imagine the Difference

Suppose the evidence shows that crews know a particular abnormal procedure well.

They can explain it.

They can perform the individual steps.

They have been trained on it repeatedly.

But operational and training data reveal something interesting.

When the abnormal situation occurs together with high workload, time pressure, and competing information, performance begins to deteriorate.

Now ask:

What is the training need?

Is it another review of the procedure?

Maybe not.

Perhaps the real issue is workload management.

Perhaps it is situational awareness.

Perhaps it is decision-making.

Perhaps communication begins to break down when several things happen at once.

If we look only at the event, we might conclude:

“They need more training on the procedure.”

If we look at the evidence behind the performance, we may reach a very different conclusion.

That is an important difference for an instructional designer.

The event tells us what happened.

The evidence can help us understand what needs development.

Evidence-Based Does Not Mean Data-Based Slides

Organizations collect a lot of data.

• Assessment results

• Safety reports

• Incident reports

• Quality findings

• Operational observations

• Performance metrics

• Audit findings

• Customer complaints

• Equipment data

• Near misses

But having data does not automatically make training evidence-based.

A spreadsheet full of numbers is still just a spreadsheet.

The value comes from what we do with the evidence.

• Does it change what we emphasize?

• Does it influence the scenarios we design?

• Does it reveal competencies that need strengthening?

• Does it challenge assumptions about where the performance problem actually sits?

• Does it tell us that some training receives too much attention while another risk receives too little?

Most importantly:

Does the evidence change a training decision?

If not, we may be collecting evidence without actually using it.

CBTA and EBT Work at Different Levels

This is where I find the relationship between CBTA and EBT particularly useful.

CBTA asks us to define competent performance.

EBT helps us use evidence to determine where that performance needs attention.

Put simply:

CBTA asks: What must people be able to do?

EBT asks: What does the evidence tell us we need to work on?

They are connected, but they are not interchangeable.

And that distinction matters.

CBTA can be used across different stages of learning, including initial and recurrent training.

Formal aviation EBT, as defined by ICAO, is specifically associated with recurrent flight crew assessment and training.

But the thinking behind both approaches has implications far beyond the flight deck.

What Other Industries Can Take From Aviation

CBTA and EBT are strongly associated with aviation, but competence and evidence are certainly not aviation-only ideas.

Consider manufacturing.

A traditional regulatory approach may identify the safety topics an equipment operator must receive training on.

Necessary.

CBTA thinking asks:

What must that operator be able to do safely and consistently on the job?

Perhaps that includes operating the equipment, recognizing abnormal conditions, responding appropriately, communicating hazards, making decisions, and managing unexpected situations.

Then evidence-based thinking adds another question:

What does our operational evidence tell us about where performance is actually breaking down?

Maybe incident reports show a pattern.

Maybe quality deviations occur repeatedly during a particular process.

Maybe supervisors consistently observe the same error.

Maybe employees perform well during training but struggle when production pressure increases.

Now the organization has something much more useful than a list of topics.

It has evidence that can inform training.

The same thinking can apply in healthcare, energy, transportation, maintenance, technical operations, manufacturing, and other regulated or safety-critical environments.

The competencies will be different.

The evidence will be different.

The consequences will be different.

But the questions remain surprisingly transferable.

• What must people be able to do?

• What does competent performance look like?

• Where is performance actually breaking down?

• What evidence supports that conclusion?

• And what should we change in training because of it?

Compliance Still Matters

None of this means compliance becomes less important.

Especially not in aviation.

Regulations exist for a reason.

Mandatory training requirements need to be met.

Records matter.

Standards matter.

Audits matter.

The mistake is creating a false choice between compliance and competence.

It should not be:

Compliance or competence.

It should be:

Compliance and competence.

We need to meet the requirement.

But we also need to ask what the requirement is ultimately trying to achieve.

Because covering a topic does not automatically create competence.

And completing training does not automatically demonstrate performance.

Assessment Has to Change Too

If our definition of successful training changes, assessment has to follow.

If competence is the goal, we cannot rely exclusively on whether someone remembers the right answer.

Knowledge assessments have their place.

But knowing the correct answer and demonstrating competent performance are different things.

That means we may need to observe people performing tasks.

We may need realistic scenarios.

We may need opportunities to see how people respond when conditions change.

We may need instructors to look for observable behaviors rather than simply mark answers right or wrong.

And assessment can become part of development rather than simply the final judgment.

Instead of only asking:

“Did they pass?”

we can ask:

“What does their performance tell us?”

That is a much richer question.

The Instructional Designer's Role Changes

This is perhaps the part I find most interesting.

CBTA and evidence-based thinking change the conversations instructional designers need to have.

When someone asks:

“Can you develop training on this?”

our first question does not necessarily have to be:

“What content should we include?”

There are better questions.

• What does the regulation require?

• What function does the employee perform?

• What does competent performance look like?

• Where is the current performance gap?

• What evidence tells us that?

• What should someone be able to demonstrate after training?

• And how will we know whether the training worked?

Those questions move instructional design closer to operations.

Closer to performance.

And closer to the reason training exists in the first place.

From Compliance to Competence to Evidence

Perhaps the most useful lesson aviation offers is not CBTA or EBT as terminology.

It is the progression behind them.

Compliance asks: What must we cover?

Competence asks: What must people be able to do?

Evidence asks: Where should we focus our attention?

And performance tells us whether any of it worked.

That creates a very different relationship between training and operations.

Training is no longer something that simply happens because the calendar says it is due.

1. Operations inform training.

2. Training develops competence.

3. Assessment provides information.

4. Evidence reveals patterns.

5. And those patterns inform the next training decision.

It becomes a loop rather than an event.

For instructional designers working in regulated environments, perhaps that is the bigger opportunity.

We don't have to choose between compliance and good instructional design.

We can satisfy the requirement while still asking better questions about performance.

Because ultimately, the goal was never simply to say:

“We covered it.”

The goal is to be able to say:

“They can do it.”

And that is what Learning by Hoda helps organizations create: competency-based training designed around what people actually need to do, not simply what needs to be covered.