(Posted May 2025)
Tracking and analyzing your CPA Common Final Examination (CFE) Day 2 and Day 3 practice case results is an important tool to help fine tune your studying and identify areas for improvement.
Tracking Your Results
Over the course of your study period, you will be writing many Day 2 and Day 3 practice cases. You should track your results daily to see your strengths, weaknesses, and trends. Without the effective tracking and analyzing of your results, your odds of seeing a weak area, correcting the problem, and passing the CPA Canada Common Final Examination (CFE) are substantially reduced. In addition, tracking your results will help build your confidence as you will be able to visually see the improvement in your results.
With four different evaluation levels, it is important to both track your results and then analyze them, to ensure you are passing each level. Each year, experienced writers will contact us after they have been unsuccessful on the CFE. They say that they do not understand why they failed the exam. We always ask for their detailed CFE results and their tracking sheet. A surprising number say that they do not have a tracking sheet, so they cannot possibly know whether they were tracking to pass the exam or not.
Track your results by case, by assessment opportunity (AO), and by CFE evaluation methodology level. An effective tracking sheet should have a column for each CFE level (and each test within that level) and a separate row for each AO written. Densmore’s CFE Prep courses include a detailed tracking sheet and a session on how to best track and analyze your results for CFE success.
Analyzing Your Progress
You need to analyze your results for them to have any real value to you. You should be analyzing your results at the end of each study week by looking at each of the four evaluation levels.
Level 2 – Depth in Financial Reporting or Management Accounting
Start with Level 2 and review your tracking sheet to evaluate if you have achieved enough Competent (C) rankings in either Financial Reporting or Management Accounting. Are the number of C rankings increasing week over week?
Level 3 – Depth in Your Role
Next, review your tracking sheet to evaluate how many C rankings you achieved in your role-specific requireds on CFE Day 2 cases. These AOs should be tracked in a separate column since you can only pass Level 3 on Day 2 of the CFE. Are the number of C rankings increasing week over week?
Level 4 – Breadth Across the Competencies
Next, review each of the six technical competency areas and evaluate whether you scoring any Reaching Competent (RC) rankings (or higher). Are the number of RCs (or higher) increasing compared to the prior week? Is there a particular area where you are having difficulty scoring RC?
Please note that there will be AOs in Financial Reporting and Management Accounting on both Day 2 and Day 3 cases that you will use to assess Level 4. AOs to assess Level 4 for the other four technical competency areas (Strategy and Governance, Audit and Assurance, Finance, and Taxation) will only be on Day 3 cases.
Level 1 – Sufficiency
We save Level 1 for last because it tests whether you are scoring enough marks across Day 2 and Day 3. Every AO on Day 2 and Day 3 cases will help you pass Level 1. RC provides 50% of the available marks, and C and Competent with Distinction (CD) provide 100% of the available marks. You will want to evaluate your results to see if, on average, you are scoring at least half of the available marks and that your number of RCs and Cs are increasing each week.
Time Management
You can also use your tracking sheet to assess your time management across the cases you have written during the week. Are you consistently scoring one or more Not Addressed (NA) or Nominal Competence (NC) rankings? That could be indicative of a time management issue. You do not want to consistently sacrifice one or two AOs on each case because you are trying to prepare a perfect answer for another required. Remember, to score RC and C consistently, it is about preparing reasonable, not perfect, analyses.
Corrective Actions
Review any notes on your performance to identify patterns (like if you consistently run out of time for an AO, or you do not know the technical for an issue). If you have a problem area, dig into the specifics to determine whether it is a consistent weakness for you and what is the cause of the problem. Once you identify the cause, determine what you are going to do differently the following week to improve your performance.
Use these patterns and the results of your analysis to create a corrective actions list. This is a list of specific tangible things that you can implement as you continue to write cases to help you improve. For example, you might decide to have a corrective action to write down the time allocated to each required on your plan so that you better manage your time as you are writing.
Managing Expectations
You should not expect to start scoring RC or C regularly as you begin case writing, nor should you ever expect to get to a place where you are achieving all Cs or CDs.
Early in your CFE preparations, you should expect to see lots of NAs and NCs (even if you scored Cs and CDs on the Core and Elective Module exams). That is completely normal. CFE cases are more difficult and more time-constrained than Core and Elective cases. It will take time to improve your approach and writing skills. You should be working towards eliminating those over the first few weeks of study, but keep in mind that you will never eliminate all NCs. Your goal during the early study period is to concentrate on balancing your time to address all AOs and eliminate the NAs.
As you move along in the process, you will start moving from NC to RC and even start scoring some Cs if you are debriefing appropriately. It will not be until your last two weeks of study prior to writing the CFE that you start to consistently see more Cs in your results, and that means that you are peaking at the right time to write the CFE.
Some of you may never feel “ready”. Candidates often give up tracking because they are not getting any better and they are frustrated. That is normal and it is often caused by candidates not analyzing their results and/or not identifying corrective actions to eliminate their weaknesses. Be diligent in both tracking and analyzing your results right up until the CFE to help your performance improve and increase your chances of CFE success.