How I passed my CIA exam, in 60 days!

It has been a long and demanding journey, but it is finally over and I've finally won!

I passed my Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) exam and have now officially become a Certified Internal Auditor, 1 of the 200,000 certified members globally and only 7500 in Canada.

As?the only globally recognized internal audit certification, becoming a Certified Internal Auditor??(CIA?) is the optimum way to communicate knowledge, skills, and competencies to effectively carry out professional responsibilities for any internal audit, anywhere in the world!

In brief the CIA exam are difficult, and I say this after having earned my ACCA and CPA qualifications earlier. The global pass rate for the CIA program is only 40% and hence it is quite common to fail these exams.

It was not by chance that I passed my exam in the first attempt. This was primarily due to an intense?study program I designed and followed. To give back to the community, I thought I would write this article on the approach I took to pass my CIA exam. I hope this helps future students on their CIA journey.

To become a CIA, candidates must meet the eligibility requirements and pass three exams. On average the standard route takes about 18-24 months to study and complete the exams.

The CIA Challenge Exam

The CIA Challenge Exam is an expedited path to becoming a CIA. Eligible candidates already have specific accounting and internal audit knowledge demonstrated through other certifications such as CPA, ACCA, etc. and can take just one exam to become a CIA.

The Exam and Syllabus

Let's first understand what the CIA challenge exam syllabus includes. Here is a link to the PDF which highlights the focus areas and subtopics that will be tested in the final exam;

https://www.theiia.org/globalassets/documents/certifications/challenge-exams/cia-challenge-exam-for-ca-and-cpa.pdf

To pass the CIA challenge exam you need a score of 600 out of 750 points covering 150 questions in 180 minutes.

However, the passing score for the CIA exam is determined through a process called standard setting. During standard setting, a global group of highly qualified internal audit professionals convene to review the CIA questions and determine the level of performance. The standard setting process for the CIA exam utilizes a well-known, industry-accepted, and highly researched method to guide the decision-making process. Through the process, a passing score is identified, which establishes the number of questions a candidate must answer correctly to pass the CIA exam. The cut scores for each part of the examination are determined based on the difficulty of the content and the questions; therefore, the number of questions needed to pass may not be the same.

Discipline Regime

My philosophy is that a discipline regime needs to be developed and followed to for goal achievement and success. I first focused on my diet and eating habits because when your stomach is full you feel lazy and don’t want to work because of tiredness. I started by eating clean which meant eating more of the best and healthiest options in each food group and less of the not-so-healthy ones. That meant embracing whole foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy proteins and healthy fats and less to none of carbs and foods containing processed sugar. I believe in the research which claims that limiting refined sugar and processed foods in your daily diet and focusing on fresh, whole plant-based foods can help slow or prevent inflammation and cognitive decline and maximize brain function.

My second step was to nap before I studied, this meant switching off everything after work and taking a short nap which helps reducing fatigue, increases alertness, improves performance, including quicker reaction time and better memory.

The Study Plan

It is important to highlight that I had ZERO formal experience in Internal Auditing and hence apart from the ethics and a few audit testing techniques that I learnt in ACCA, I was new to this area. However, I strive for excellence in everything I do and hence research on this area was crucial. My research on the CIA exams showed that those that fail these exams usually fail by a few points. To me this indicates mistakes in understanding the exam itself, rather that not being sufficiently knowledgeable of the study material.

My goal was to complete all the CIA exam prep in 60 days as this was the only period of low time I had in my workspace.

I analyzed the amount of study materials I had to study to ensure I am sufficiently prepared for the exam. I only focused on the IIA issued materials which included 3 books and an online practise quiz portal. For some odd reason I've always avoided indulging in third party exam preparation materials, and it's always worked (until now, more on this later). Anyways, here is a breakdown of the book itself.

Part 1: Essentials of Internal Auditing; 320 pages

Part 2: Practice of Internal Auditing; 235 pages

Part 3: Business Knowledge for Internal Auditing; 263 pages

That comes to 818 pages in total to read which covers the entire syllabus.

Then comes the quiz portal contains the following number of questions per section;

Internal Auditing Foundations Quiz - 55 practice questions

Independence and Objectivity Quiz - 50 practice questions

Proficiency Quiz - 50 practice questions

Quality Assurance Quiz - 35 practice questions

Governance, Risk, and Control Quiz - 80 practice questions

Fraud Risks Quiz - 39 practice questions

Managing Quiz - 90 practice questions

Planning Quiz - 145 practice questions

Performing Quiz - 70 practice questions

Communicating Quiz - 70 practice questions

Business Acumen Quiz - 60 practice questions

Data Analytics Quiz - 30 practice questions

Information Technology Quiz - 73 practice questions

This is a total of 847 practice questions to go through.

I then assessed on a reasonable amount of time to devote to study each day given my work and life commitments, keeping in mind I have a thrashing-on-the-floor, tantrum-filled toddler in the house too.

I understood that in one hour, I can read 20 to 25 pages per hour which included making quick notes and highlight areas of key focus. Hence, I started reading the books dedicating 2 to 2.5 hours per day.

In about 20 days (40 days remaining to exam), I was done with my first thorough review of the books. A strategy which is mostly recommended is to test your knowledge by immediately doing a practice quiz. I however disagree as I like to test my brains capability of holding information for a longer period of time. This is one reason that I did not touch the practice quiz until I was thoroughly done with the reading the books first.

On the 21st day, I started solving at least 70-85 practice questions per study session. This was around 1 question every 1.5 minutes over a period of 2 hours. The final goal before the exam was to answer 1 question in 50-60 seconds, because you only have 1.2 minutes per question in the final exam. Keep in mind that in the final exam you need additional time to review whenever in doubt.

My second goal was to score at least an average of 80% before writing the final exam.

I was done with answering all the practice questions in 10 days (30 days remaining till exam day). My average score after solving 847 questions came to 64%, which is very low from what my goal was to achieve.

I then went ahead to repeat the practice quiz cycle but was faced with the same questions again, to which now I almost knew what the correct answer would be. Continuation of the IIA provided quiz would mean that I would NOT be able to know my "real score" in a surprise test/exam environment.

PLAN B

I then went on to research on third party developed practice exam question banks. I could only find 2-3 websites that were only offering a limited number of questions. I came across the CIA exam practice books provided by Gleim and got one for myself. It had more than 2000 questions and in my opinion, this was more than sufficient to practice my knowledge on.

Overall, I must've answered (was unable to track accurately) around 1400 questions in the next 12 days (18 days to final exam). I was able to answer each question roughly a minute by the end of this session.

Since I had sufficient time until the exam day and 12 days had passed since I last tested on the IIA quiz portal, I planned to go back and test my score. I found this worked incredibly well as it meant there was a large gap in time between retesting of tests.

I took 7 days (11 days to final exam) to go through the 847 questions again and scored an average score of 82%. This meant that I achieved my set goal, but keep in mind these questions were already answered earlier and hence I could not completely rely on this score alone.

The Mock

I truly believe in sitting for a mock exam since they allow you to practice key questions and test your knowledge; they also allow you to complete the exam under the same time conditions as the real thing if you do them properly.

The IIA learning material includes mock exam questions containing 150 questions which are recommended to be done once you are done reading the books and answer the practice quiz.

Over the next 2 days (9 days to final exam) I sat for 2 mock exams, each 3 hours long. My mock exam result was 70% and 75%, which really bothered me since I felt I should have scored in the higher 80's.

The mock exam helped me identify the areas of weakness. To overcome these weak topics, I went back to the basics, reading the book and the notes I had prepared. I took my time and spent 7 more days (2 days to final exam) going over the 818 pages more in detail to find hidden clues.

I then took my final mock exam 2 days prior to the final exam day and scored 82%. This was a goal achieved and I was happy, but still nervous. This exercise really paid off during the exam as I was able to answer about 1/3rd of the questions very quickly, within 30 seconds, which allowed me more time to deal with some of the very difficult/unexpected/time consuming questions and to review these answers.?

The Grand Finale

I booked my final exam for Tuesday at 3pm. There were a couple of reasons for this. I hate getting stuck in morning traffic and hence driving downtown was best during mid-day. I was fortunate in that my employer gave me a few days study leave to prepare for the exam. By taking the exam on a Tuesday, I had several consecutive work-free days beforehand where I could concentrate solely on CIA study. I was on leave on Friday, which meant I had the weekend as well as Friday and Monday to prepare.

I made sure that on the day of the exam I did not study but instead relaxed to get mentally prepared for the ordeal ahead.

On the day of the exam, I drove downtown to the Pearson VUE testing center. Prior to reaching I had not touched any reading/testing materials. I reached an hour early and spent 30 minutes revising on some key steps to be performed from designing the Internal Audit charter to the final audit report communication.

Based on the quiz and mock experience, I was mentally prepared for the “WTF” questions, which came “out of nowhere”. The trick was to take ownership for solving these questions even if they were somewhat “unfair”. I viewed these questions as a problem-solving challenge to be resolved by using my analytical skills.

Another area of focus was on

(a) analyzing the question, in particular the keywords in the question, and

(b) the answer options and the keywords in each answer option.

For the CIA exam many of the questions you will not be certain of the answer, and you need to make an educated guess based on thorough analysis of the question and possible answers.

Overall, the exam was definitely a challenge but totally worth the experience having achieved 3 more letters (CIA) after my name.

Conclusion

I hope readers have found this article useful. Most of the things I did to prepare for my CIA exams worked incredibly well and I would do the same if I were to be faced with another similar challenge.

I am happy to assist/support candidates who are preparing for their CIA exam.

p.s.: I have been receiving several messages and comments to share my study materials. Please note that the materials are now outdated and it is highly recommended to only refer to the study materials provided directly by authorized learning providers (i.e.: IIA, Gleim).