FIRST, DERIVING ANSWERS. This is a basic, yet essential skill if you're gonna work with solutions. You gotta be able to look at the original case you're doing and then find out how the solution to the case was derived.
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The following is all rough work (meaning I didn't derive anything! I just glanced and gave my opinion on the sample solution roles in response to the sample CFE). I still raise some good points, but again this is literally scanning very carefully and speaking my thoughts.
The review was... Interesting
The 2 sample case solution roles I reviewed were:
Tax (which had 4 pages of additional info just for tax)
&
Assurance (which had 3 pages of additional info just for assurance)
Tax Sample Solution was:
- 11 pages long
- Quality expected was: Mostly Entry level C, Core level C, and Elective level B sometimes A
The assurance response was:
- 20 pages long
- Quality expected was: Mostly Core level B and Elective level A (no entry level assurance!)
Now with that being said, you would want to pick Tax right?
Wrong. I looked at tax. And it was almost a foreign language. They expect you to know tax consequences of situations and tax planning opportunities as per the CPA competency map. I am not good at either of these things. So that means tax'll be tough for me.
I felt really strong on the tax elective, because I smashed the corporate tax case I got, and flunked the individual tax case I got, So I ended up barely passing. But for assurance, I really knew my stuff and I ended up just barely passing, which is also scary.
Then I looked at assurance, and it's very organized and structured just like assurance is supposed to be which is GREAT! That means you'll basically have the answer when you walk in! It's almost like filling in the blanks. For example: They expect you to assess materiality, assess risks for a project, develop appropriate procedures, perform a work plan. <-- these are things that are not too bad! procedures are based on risks and risks are based on assertions. It sort of narrows down from easy to hard (assertions are super simple, and vary based on whether it's an income statement or balance sheet account you're talking about). However risk areas might be a little difficult to recognize. So, I'm pretty sure I could piece together this sort of stuff if I looked at a case and run through this assurance process.
So although assurance is longer. And the quality expected is higher. For myself, familiarity and understandability were much higher with the assurance role which is pretty damn important. I'm saying this because when you're asked to do an audit in the sample CFE case, you audit operations. As opposed to tax, which analyzes compensation, also tax terminology like GAAR, deemed year ends, accounting/tax differences. Another big plus is the resources I have. I have all the assurance cases for D2L. I didn't take the Tax course, so I don't have the PC cases or IC cases. I don't have the quizzes even! I feel as though the ITA is less understandable than the CAS (Canadian Audit Standards). I mean come on have you read the ITA!? I dunno maybe I'm biased.
Lastly, I didn't really wanna touch upon this because it's really important to just PASS the damn thing, but if you do assurance, you'll have the public accounting license. Which is a great reward! Another incentive for choosing assurance. But I didn't wanna touch upon it because the focus here is difficulty and passing the CFE. Not the rewards you get after you pass it.
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