"With CIMA certification, you are not just learning to be an accountant", says a lecturer for beginning CIMA students. "You are learning to manage accountants and other professionals. You are learning to be a leader.” He is right. The objective of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants or CIMA is to produce competent and confident management accounting professionals who can guide and lead their organisations to sustainable success.

If you’re going to take a test, reading strategies about how to pass it is not enough to optimize your study time and effort. Going for financial certification is best done by taking full-length practice tests. Brain research and educational experience suggest that you learn best by doing, by applying what you learn to an authentic situation.

In January 2015, CIMA syllabus as well as the way to examine students’ knowledge has changed. Since then we have OT exams (computer-based, that can be taken anytime in a dedicated centre) and case studies (computer-based, 4 times a year). OT exams’ questions are kept in a database and each time a student sits down to an exam, 60 questions are randomly drawn and students have 90 minutes to answer them.

The objective test question (OTQ) assessments are available for the 13 core topics, plus you can take them whenever you want. This is such an improvement compared to the previous 2010 syllabus, not to mention the aching hand after 3 hours of writing.