Your question is very subjective, and there is no "right" answer, however, I will try to give you a bit of insight as best I can:
CMS systems are good when you need a quick website that is easy to use and manage. They are very flexible, and can be used in a variety of different situations. Most well-designed CMS systems are also easily expanded upon, making existing ones easy to customize to your needs. Even the underlying code can be modified (though you'll need to make sure you aren't breaking any licensing rules by doing this).
That being said, you'll find that sometimes it is harder, or impossible (in the case of licensing issues) to modify an existing CMS to your needs). For this reason, it's a good idea to see how CMS systems work, in case you are ever required to create one, but in effect, they are not very complicated. Most are just a collection of units, such as a log-in system, forums system (which is usually integrated with some other forum software), voting system, etc, which can be easily replicated (especially with the Zend Framework), and reused.
My advice to you is to at least understand how these systems work, in fact, down to the bare PHP (without a framework), so you can get a better picture of what is happening. However, evaluate each and every project you work on; if it is more time or cost beneficial to use an existing CMS, with or without modifications, then use that, otherwise, make sure you know how to create your own if it is needed.