BCBAs must complete 4 ethics CEUs per 2-year cycle. They count toward your 32 total — browse 59 approved courses below.
Four, every two-year cycle, with no exemption for where you practice or whether you supervise. Like the supervision hours, they are carved out of your 32 rather than added to them, which is the detail people get wrong when they sit down to plan a cycle.
| Requirement | Hours per 2-year cycle | Counts toward the 32 total? |
|---|---|---|
| Ethics CEUs | 4 | Yes |
| Supervision CEUs (if you supervise) | 3 | Yes |
| General CEUs | 25 (28 if you are not supervising) | Yes |
| Total per cycle | 32 | n/a |
So a supervising BCBA's cycle reads 4 ethics + 3 supervision + 25 general. If you are not supervising anyone, it is 4 ethics + 28 general. Either way the ethics line stays at 4, and there is no version of this where it goes away.
Why this one gets left to the end: ethics is the smallest requirement on the list, which makes it easy to postpone, and the most specific, which makes it the hardest to satisfy by accident. Nothing in your general hours quietly turns into ethics credit at recertification. The BACB checks credit types, not just the total.
A course counts as ethics credit only if the ACE provider issued it as ethics credit. A genuinely thoughtful session on assent that raises ethical questions throughout is still a general CEU if that is how the hours were designated. Read the credit line on the course page before you enroll, and read the certificate when it arrives. You cannot reclassify hours yourself, and neither can we.
If you supervise, you also owe 3 supervision CEUs for BCBAs on the same cycle, and everything left over is general. When budget is the constraint, the free BCBA CEU directory is the fastest way to fill the rest of the 32 without spending anything.
55 of the 59 courses below are designated ethics credit; the badge on each card shows the credit type, since a few are general-credit sessions with heavy ethics content. 9 are free, 41 are on demand, and 18 are recorded conference sessions. Filter by credit count or jump straight to the free ones.
Ethics is 4 of your 32 hours and the only 4 that nothing else can substitute for. Clearing them in year one leaves every remaining hour flexible, so you can follow whatever clinical topic your caseload throws at you in year two instead of hunting for a specific credit type on a deadline.
Requirements are set by the BACB, and the certificant handbook at bacb.com is the authority on the current cycle. Check it against your own recertification date rather than trusting any catalog, including this one.
The BACB requires ethics CEUs to address the ethics code itself or the application of ethics to behavior-analytic practice. Clinical content that brushes against ethical considerations along the way usually does not qualify, even when the reasoning in the room is genuinely ethical. The provider makes the call when it designates the credit, and the certificate is the record of it.
If you want the primary source rather than someone's summary of it, the BACB's ethics codes page holds the current code and its updates. Reading it start to finish costs nothing and takes about an hour, which is a better use of a lunch break than most of what we do with one.
Ethics CEUs are the ones most often bought in a hurry, which is exactly when you end up on a site you have never heard of at 11pm with a cycle closing on Friday. Four checks, in this order, and they take about two minutes.
Only an Authorized Continuing Education (ACE) provider can issue BACB CEUs. Look any unfamiliar name up in the BACB ACE Provider directory before you pay. Every course in the catalog above comes from a verified ACE provider, but check anything you source elsewhere, especially a conference recording or a vendor webinar.
The course page should say so plainly, with the hour count next to it. If the credit type is nowhere in writing, treat it as general credit and keep looking. Hours that arrive on a certificate as general credit stay general credit, however ethics-heavy the session was.
A weak ethics CEU reads the code aloud for an hour. A good one hands you a case with no clean answer, walks through how a behavior analyst reasons toward a defensible decision, and tells you what to document. Scan the learning objectives: if none of them involve doing anything, it is a reading.
An ACE provider issues a certificate showing your name, the course title, the credit hours and type, the date, and the provider. Save each one to a single cloud folder as it arrives. The BACB audits a sample of certificants each cycle, and assembling two years of certificates under a deadline is its own special misery.
Three places worth your time, for three different reasons.
Our own community. Live CEU every Wednesday at noon EST with ethics regularly in the rotation, and the recordings stay in the library afterward. Free, and no credit card to join.
All 59 ethics courses listed on this page are delivered through BehaviorLive, 9 of them free. State associations and individual practices host the sessions, so the presenter matters more than the platform does. Read the learning objectives first.
Hosts live and on-demand CEU sessions for behavior analysts. Worth a look when you want a live ethics session on a specific date rather than a recording, or when you want to put your own case to the presenter while it is still fresh.
If you would rather choose by who is teaching, the organizations running the most ethics sessions in this catalog are Florida Association of Behavior Analysis (11 sessions), Mindful Behavior, LLC (8 sessions), and Motivity (4 sessions). State association sessions in particular tend to be strong on regional practice questions, licensure boards, and the situations that actually generate ethics complaints.
Worth knowing: you do not have to get all 32 hours in one place. Take the 4 ethics hours wherever the teaching is best, pick up your 3 supervision CEUs for BCBAs from whoever handles supervision well, and fill the rest from the free BCBA CEU catalog. The BACB never asks where the hours came from, only that the provider was ACE-approved and the credit type was right.
BCBAs must complete at least 4 ethics CEUs per 2-year certification cycle. These must cover the BACB Ethics Code or the direct application of ethics to behavior analysis practice.
Courses covering the BACB Ethics Code, ethical decision-making frameworks, client rights, informed consent, confidentiality, dual relationships, supervisory ethics, or professional responsibility — when offered by an ACE-approved provider.
Yes. Your 4 required ethics CEUs count as part of your 32 total — not in addition to them. Breakdown: 4 ethics + 3 supervision (if supervising) + 25 general = 32.
Yes. The ABA Clubhouse (BBC's free Skool community) hosts live ethics CEUs regularly, with on-demand recordings in its library. Several ACE providers in this catalog also offer free ethics courses. The BACB has no minimum cost requirement.
Yes. Online ethics CEUs are fully accepted — live, synchronous, or self-paced async — as long as the provider holds ACE (Authorized Continuing Education) status.
Failing to complete 4 ethics CEUs by your cycle end date results in ineligibility to recertify. You cannot renew your BCBA certification without meeting all CEU type requirements, including ethics.
Yes, as long as the session was offered for BACB credit by an ACE provider and your certificate shows ethics hours. 18 of the 59 courses in this catalog are recorded conference sessions. Whether you watched it live in a ballroom or at home eight months later makes no difference to the BACB. The credit designation and your documentation do.
A single course can be designated with both credit types, and 19 courses in BBC's wider catalog are. What it cannot do is count the same hour twice: a 2-credit session designated 1 ethics plus 1 supervision gives you one hour toward each requirement, not two toward both. Check the credit breakdown on the certificate before you assume it covers you.
Join The ABA Clubhouse — live CEU every Wednesday, ethics & supervision included, always free.
Join Free →All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.