Exam Regularly Changing

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Every quarter, the AICPA is rolling out another Uniform CPA Examination, AICPA Vice President Michael Decker told the NASBA Annual Meeting. He advised everyone to look at the blueprints for the CPA Examination on the AICPA website because every six months they are updated. The role of the Examination is to provide assurance that the candidate has skills to protect the public at the entry level, Mr. Decker stated: “The challenge we face is that we don’t want to have questions too early because then we would be assessing skills the candidates don’t need; we don’t want to be too late or the skills would be obsolete; we want it just right.”

Beginning on January 1, 2019, all the tax content on the Examination will be on the new tax law, Mr. Decker stated. Audit data analytics questions are being added to the Examination and the weighting of the topics is under consideration. He observed that there needs to be “an almost continuing practice analysis” and the AICPA is having discussions with the profession about that.

Candidates want to be able to test more often, with no dark testing periods, NASBA Executive Vice President and COO Colleen Conrad told the meeting, and the AICPA, Prometric and NASBA have determined continuous testing is feasible. The CBT Committee polled the State Boards’ executive directors to determine if they could be ready for continuous testing on January 1, 2020. The Model Rule being exposed for comment was developed in response to that poll’s results. Almost every state will have to change a rule or a statute to make continuous testing possible, she acknowledged.

Testing sites for the Uniform CPA Examination have been added in Germany, Ireland, England and Scotland, Ms. Conrad announced. Administration of the Examination in India is also under consideration.