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This post is a follow-up to a previous article When Accountants SHOULDN’T Count. Here, I will discuss some opportunities both within and beyond a case when CPA PEP candidates can and should count.
In each Unit, you will have the opportunity to write, debrief, and receive facilitator feedback on a practice case (PC) – a case designed to mimic your final exam. It is natural to “underperform” on these PCs at the beginning of the module when the content is relatively new to you. It is also normal to have a “bump” or two throughout the module.
To manage this, I suggest you track your weekly performance so that you can see both your incremental improvement throughout the module AND recognize that “bump” as an outlier versus a trend. That said, if you notice decreasing performance, this also allows you to (re)focus your efforts accordingly.
As a practicing accountant 😊
You will have plenty of opportunities within the case to demonstrate competency. After all, as professional accountants, we love to count and are good at it!
In an informal survey of my accountant friends, I find that 100% of us use spreadsheets to count “various non-accounting” aspects of our lives, including:
While it is tempting to try and control close proxies to exam success, I promise this is a losing battle. Instead, I suggest focusing on the inputs and letting go of the rest.
Perhaps we can also try to do that with uncontrollable variables in life, too. Saying this as a reminder for a friend…
Tracking performance
In each Unit, you will have the opportunity to write, debrief, and receive facilitator feedback on a practice case (PC) – a case designed to mimic your final exam. It is natural to “underperform” on these PCs at the beginning of the module when the content is relatively new to you. It is also normal to have a “bump” or two throughout the module. To manage this, I suggest you track your weekly performance so that you can see both your incremental improvement throughout the module AND recognize that “bump” as an outlier versus a trend. That said, if you notice decreasing performance, this also allows you to (re)focus your efforts accordingly.
During the case
As a practicing accountant 😊You will have plenty of opportunities within the case to demonstrate competency. After all, as professional accountants, we love to count and are good at it!
In everyday life
In an informal survey of my accountant friends, I find that 100% of us use spreadsheets to count “various non-accounting” aspects of our lives, including:
- Vacation planning? ✓
- Professional development? ✓
- Goal tracking? ✓
While it is tempting to try and control close proxies to exam success, I promise this is a losing battle. Instead, I suggest focusing on the inputs and letting go of the rest.
Perhaps we can also try to do that with uncontrollable variables in life, too. Saying this as a reminder for a friend…
Do you have feedback on this post or a question you’d like answered by an experienced CPAWSB educator? Please contact your facilitator or send a question to the General Topic in the Candidate Discussion forum.
Samantha Taylor, PME, CPA, CA
Samantha Taylor, PME, CPA, CA, is an educator and lead policy advisor for CPAWSB and a Senior Instructor of accounting at Dalhousie University. She is on a mission to understand and enable learner efficacy while eliminating doldrums occasionally associated with accounting education. Read more of Sam’s posts at the CPAWSB blog.
