(Posted May 2023)
The September 2022 CPA Common Final Examination (CFE) Report should be available this week on the CPA Canada website. Having said that, we recommend that you do NOT read it now if you are a 2023 CFE candidate.
There is a method to our madness. The cases that were used in the most recent actual CFEs are the best practice material that you will encounter. In fact, you will write these cases this summer during the Capstone 2 module or in practice if you are not taking the module. Do NOT ruin the benefit by peeking at them beforehand. You can read the CFE report details as part of your debrief of those cases AFTER you have written them.
The same advice applies to those of you waiting for PARs (Performance Analysis Reviews) that are expected to be released in early May. You will be writing those cases prior to the CFE so do NOT burn those invaluable resources by reading the detail in your PAR in May. For those of you registered in our Densmore CFE Prep courses, send your CFE Day 1 and/or CFE Day 2 and 3 PARs to cfeprep@densmorecpa.com along with your tracking sheet. We will analyze it for you to help you understand the weaknesses that you need to eliminate on this attempt. Our PAR analysis will give you a high-level overview of what to focus on during your studies. Then, you can read your PAR in detail as part of your debrief AFTER you have written each of those cases during your CFE study time.
Of course, if you have already passed the September 2022 CFE and you are a coach, mentor or marker, we highly recommend that you read the report (Part A and Part B) to better understand the CFE evaluation and marking process. In particular, “A Message to Candidates” in the “Part A – The Day 2 and Day 3 Report” is typically quite helpful since it provides insights from the Board of Examiners. If you are a candidate, not to worry since we will incorporate all of those insights into our September CFE Prep courses to help you understand and learn the critical skills needed for CFE success.
Again, timing is everything with the CFE!