How to fail the UFE: act like one of Francine's bad partners
There's no one surefire way to pass your accounting exams, but on an exam like the UFE, you simply must avoid falling into certain traps.
Francine recently wrote a very interesting post about the layoffs occuring at PWC's consulting/advisory group, and attributes much of the blame to partners. What's even more interesting than the 30 or so comments in response to the post - a minor record for those posts - was the list of bullet points at the end of the post, which serve as a handy "Do not Do" list for UFE and similar exam writers. Here's the list, with my commentary inserted to make the lessons a little more obvious.
- Secretive about goals, objectives and results.
You simply must
state your major assumptions, what you plan to achieve, and how you're going to do it. Some would call this an outline. An 'outline' sounds lame, though. A strong Framework or Foundation is a bit more accurate. No matter what you call it, identify it and when you're done, make sure you've accomplished what you set out to do.- Don’t answer emails if the question is unpleasant, avoid conflict, encourage get-along, go-along attitude.
You would think this might not apply - it's just a matter of "ignoring tricky people", no?
No.
You will be presented with scenarios where you don't know the right answer. Ignoring the problem is just as bad, or even worse, than guessing the right answer. Guessing isn't much better though: you must think. You're being examined on whether or not you should gain the august credential of a Chartered Accountant. If you can't deal with an unfamiliar situation, what good are you?
- Are
better in a situation where they can judge past actions, not advocate
or take a position on the future. (That's an audit mentality not a
consulting mentality.)
This ties in nicely with the last point. Always come up with a solution!
First year audit staff are intimidated into saying, "this is what you should do", because they are, after all, apprentices in the professional trade of accounting. But first year staff will turn into second and third year audit staff and seniors, and eventually managers. They need to come up with a conclusion and, of course, support it with some strong logic. The UFE is but one of the first of many places where this will be true.
You need to think on your feet. If you ever joined a debating club that would've been one of the smarter decisions you could've made, but it's of course not the only way to learn how to think. If you want to impress people, show them that you can listen to their problem, and offer a novel solution. And if it's not a completely new idea, at least present your thoughts in an intelligent way.
- Expect a servile attitude from managers and staff.
Funny, if I worked in a company where the "sheep" were rewarded, I would quit sooner rather than later. There are few things more satisfying than knowing that not only are you "allowed" to explain why someone's proposed approach is wrong, but you'll actually be commended and respected by the person you criticze for doing this. I know I'm not living in a tiny happy bubble of free thinking because the same thing has occured to a very smart friend of mine in another department.
My friend, working in 'real' financial audit rather than my IT audit area - where the jaded cynic would expect a more submissive mindset, tells me of situations where the people who get the most respect are those who point out why this or that approach is right or wrong, standing up for what's more correct. Rather than anger their superiors, they get more love for challenging the team to do better.
I'm kind of drifting off the "exam tips" track into general career observations, but we can drag this back to the UFE easily: remember that you may have to challenge the opinion presented by a manager or partner in an exam case. Don't be scared of doing that. Take it as an opportunity to explain why your approach is actually correct. Or, admit where they're right, and state that they're right.
It happens.
Sometimes.
- Expect
that servile attitude to carry forward to clients. However, clients
lose respect when you don't take a position, take a stand, make
decisions.
The second sentence there pretty much sums it up. Again, as mentioned above, think, come up with something intelligent, and then share the fruits of your intellectual labours with your paying clients. Easy.- Don't know how to ask for the work, compete, or measure their effectiveness in delivering value to clients.
You can interpret this as a tip on many levels. A partner's operations on the sales side are outside the relatively
tighter 'scope' of an exam like the UFE, but identifying how you're
delivering value is a universal requirement to be awesome.
On a pure UFE level, here's a practical hint: practice coming up with effective "quants".
If you're going to measure and calculate something, ask yourself, "is this going to help?" If you're being asked by a couple as to how they should expand their petting zoo, consider the relevant details - do they have enough money, space and time to expand, will the expansion be profitable?
Figure out which metrics you have that you can work with, and identify which assumptions you're relying on, and how big, fat and dangerous those assumptions may be. Going off on a crazy tangent about your favourite breed of cyber-cat or why alpacas are overrated because of their use as inside jokes in Simcity games won't help. Figuring out an expected cash flow, on the other hand, often will.
- Don't
know how to leverage business development professionals to manage the
sales process while the partners manage the sales content.
On exams they won't necessarily give you a team to manage, but you'll be expected to be clever enough to share basic advice like, praise good work, offer constructive criticism for failures.
A lot of the stuff you get tested on in the UFE you can't learn in any book, but rather through a combination of real world experience, common sense, and raw intelligence.
Good luck.