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The CMA exam is not easy—according to IMA, the CMA exam pass rate averages 50% for Parts 1 and 2. The exam has been used by ICMA (the Institute of Certified Management Accountants) to ensure candidates have the requisite knowledge and skill to perform at the CMA level for more than 50 years.
More specifically, the CMA exam ensures candidates have a firm grasp on the following management accounting and financial management concepts:
The Certified Management Accountant exam sets the bar high for mastery of these concepts and has a reputation for being difficult. Between the pass rate and the CMA exam costs, you’ll want to take your preparation seriously. To help, we’ll cover the three main factors contributing to CMA exam difficulty and explain what they mean so you’re prepared to pass with confidence.
The three main factors that make the CMA exam hard to pass are:
Understanding what makes the CMA exam difficult will help you create an effective study strategy, so start your preparations by learning about the three factors that make the CMA exam difficult.
The fact that the CMA exam is divided into only two parts contributes to its difficulty.
Because the exam addresses a wide range of accounting topics, each part has to cover an immense amount of content. That means you have to learn a lot of different material before you’re ready for one exam session. Tackling the exam “one piece at a time” is difficult when you’re dealing with two big pieces.
Our free CMA Exam Guide lays things out simply, but if you want to get technical, there are two places you can go to to dive deep into CMA exam content:
Basically, the parts are broken down into topics, and the topics are broken down further in the CSOs. Because of the complex nature of management accounting, many topics are interrelated and build on one another.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The LOSs then try to communicate the same information in terms of “individual things a CMA does,” which requires a lot of specificity. For reference, the LOSs for Part 1 contain 287 tasks and the LOSs for Part 2 contain 256 tasks!
Don’t let those numbers scare you though. They’re a function of the way that information is being communicated. And while there is clearly a lot of content covered on the CMA exam, you don’t have to go it alone.
The best way to learn everything you need to know is to study with a CMA review course, and if you study with us, you don’t even need to look at the CSOs or LOSs.
We carefully map the CSOs and LOSs to our study materials to ensure 100% coverage of exam content every time we update our course, so you never have to be overwhelmed by their complexity. If you follow your smart recommendations in the course, you’ll be prepared.
Want to learn more about what is on the CMA Exam?
Gleim helps prospective CMAs apply, study, pass, and more!
ICMA defines six different skill levels, ranging from the ability to remember things to the ability to apply specific professional skills—and beyond! The higher-tier skills are difficult to develop, which is why CMAs are in such high demand.
These are the six CMA exam skills defined by ICMA:
| Skill levels tested on the CMA exam | |
|---|---|
|
Knowledge |
Ability to remember previously learned material such as specific facts, criteria, techniques, principles, and procedures (i.e., identify, define, list). |
|
Comprehension |
Ability to grasp and interpret the meaning of material (i.e., classify, explain, distinguish between). |
|
Application |
Ability to use learned material in new and concrete situations (i.e., demonstrate, predict, solve, modify, relate). |
|
Analysis |
Ability to break down material into its component parts so that its organizational structure can be understood; ability to recognize causal relationships, discriminate between behaviors, and identify elements that are relevant to the validation of a judgment (i.e., differentiate, formulate, revise). |
|
Synthesis |
Ability to put parts together to form a new whole or proposed set of operations; ability to relate ideas and formulate hypotheses (i.e., combine, formulate, revise). |
| Evaluation | Ability to judge the value of material for a given purpose on the basis of consistency, logical accuracy, and comparison to standards; ability to appraise judgments involved in the selection of a course of action (i.e., criticize, justify, conclude). |
The ICMA groups the skills above to define three levels of coverage that candidates might expect to see for a given topic:
Basically, each level contains the level before it and adds a new layer. We like to explain the levels of knowledge like this:
ICMA sets the content coverage level for every major exam topic at Level C.
It does this to stress the importance of the mastery of high-level concepts.
This illustrates the point—that expertise is what’s required to pass the exam—but these levels of knowledge are best understood when applied to individual questions. Unfortunately, because there is no way to tell how many questions from each topic will be tested at which level, the only way to pass is to learn all of the CMA exam content well, but don’t panic or overthink it.
Not every question is going to be as hard as ICMA can possibly make it.
If you want to make sure you’re ready, review with the largest test bank on the market. You’ll have access to thousands of questions covering every exam topic, each one with detailed explanations for the right and wrong answer choices.
Want to see what CMA exam questions are really like? Click here!
First of all, don’t worry! Not all hope is lost. Many people who fail the CMA exam go on to pass it on their next try.
If you do not pass the CMA exam, you will receive a CMA score report approximately 14 days after your exam results are posted. This score report will help refine your study plan to retake the exam, but it should not be your only consideration.