I have never before laughed on an exam as hard as I did today
I’d like to thank zip.ca and Blockbuster Entertainment for almost making me fail the UFE.
Not from wasting time watching movies instead of studying - although that was a risk that made me cancel my zip.ca membership for a while.
No, I would’ve failed from spending too much time rolling on the floor laughing my *** off.
Today was day three of
the UFE - the final day! - and question three - yeah, the final question - was about a movie rental business, which had some problems. Customers didn’t like the
Blockbuster-ish “no late fee” policy because there was still a late fee (you have to buy the video if you don’t return it on time), and the business also decided to go head-to-head with
zip.caThe case didn’t identify any of
those businesses by name, of course - but if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’d at least know about the Blockbuster fiasco. And I’ve been using zip.ca off-and-on for the entire past year, so I know exactly how their service works.
I think I managed to actually answer the question without “sinking myself” by talking about the short history of zip.ca’s operations, as interesting as they are - but in an ode to risk-taking, I did toss in a quick paragraph about that anyway - technically there is such a thing as “bonus marks” on the UFE - they’re called secondary indicators. They’re what you get for answering the question no one asked you to deal with: you get a mark for the secondaries if and only if you forgot or failed to talk about one of
the six competency areas in sufficient depth somewhere else over the course of the three day exam.
Despite “going to town” on http://www.moviesbymail.ca/ (a site which, of course, doesn’t exist in reality... yet, anyway), I saved enough time to talk about the important things - how to deal with accounting for their new issues, how to audit those areas, and ways to identify and fix their website’s many problems.
The UFE rewarded you if you were an accounting geek and thought
regularly about “what would be the accounting effect of this or that
impact on a business”. Or if you’re just clever and could come up with
an intelligent discussion of the topic on the spot.
The first question of the exam was a reason to relax - and immediately tense up, depending on how you feel about tax. The first two days of the UFE were remarkably light on tax issues - but they made up for all that with a full question devoted to your fictional role as an auditor for the
CRA investigating a seedy butcher named Andrea.
I’m probably being over dramatic again - Andrea wasn’t necessarily seedy - just poorly informed about taxes. Ridiculously poorly informed, I suppose. You weren’t required to calculate how much tax she would owe, but one hundred thousand dollars would’ve been a good ballpark estimate.
In case you’re wondering, she only declared thirty thousand bucks of
income!
The second question was about another issue near and dear to me: online video. While there was no direct connection to Videosift, the question was about a couple that made a fortune with their “reality TV show” partly thanks to buzz generated online. If you’re a fan of comics, punk music, or any other idiosyncratic community that punishes those who become popular and “sell out” you could’ve done very well on that question.
It would also help, of course, if you could give them some intelligent advice about their decision to sell out.
I could probably write more, but I’m done like dinner. The exam’s over and it’s time to relax. We’ll know how things
actually went this November.
Fingers crossed.