News

During the most recent Faculty Hour hosted by This Way to CPA on Apr. 22, the AICPA vice president of CPA Examination and Pipeline, Michael Decker reviewed the coming changes to the CPA Exam infrastructure. Key takeaways from the event include: 

1. Assessing research and related critical thinking skills differently.
   • Will use task-based simulations (TBS) with a focus on research.
   • AuthLit will be removed from the exam in order to reduce restart rates and candidate complaints regarding the search engine.
2. A JavaScript based spreadsheet will replace the Excel spreadsheet.
   • The exam does not assess Excel skill. Rather, Excel is used only as a scratch spreadsheet.
3. The Written Communication Task (WCT) is being removed from the CPA Exam.
   • The WCT does not provide an assessment of content accuracy of the response.
   • Eliminating the WCT removes a delay reporting scores.
4. Multistage adaptive testing (MST) in the multiple-choice question testlets will be eliminated.
   • The number of multiple-choice questions has decreased. Removing MST will reduce exam assembly and complexity as well as ongoing exam software maintenance and testing.

For Decker’s full review of the CPA Evolution exam changes, the webinar can be viewed in its entirety on This Way to CPA.