Real CMA-questions so you know what to expect

An examination is required for the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) degree. The CMA exams are computer-based and administered in hundreds of testing facilities worldwide. With three testing windows each year, you can sit for an exam part at a time and place convenient for you. Testing windows are Jan/Feb, May/June and Sep/Oct. To avoid additional entrance and exam fees both parts have to be passed within 3 years after registration with us.

Take this short practice quiz of real CMA questions to see what it’s all about. To locate a Testing Centre close to you, visit www.prometric.com/ICMA

As a CMA, you’ll show employers you’ve got the critical skills every accounting and finance professional needs. Earning it gives you access to new career opportunities and higher earning potential.

Targeted training for your international career planning

According to research by the Degreed skills platform, the global health and economic crisis is having three major impacts on the state of skills:

It accelerates the need for new skills.
It reduces opportunities for upskilling and reskilling.
It is making the workforce more stressed and vulnerable.

Currently, according to this survey, technological skills rank at the top across countries, followed by skills in leadership and management, and communication and negotiation techniques.

Take advantage of the opportunity to train individually and specifically to become a CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) during the crisis.

For nearly 50 years, the CMA® certificatin for Professionals has been the global benchmark for management accountants and financial professionals. Why? Because CMAs can explain the “why” behind numbers, not just the “what.” And that can give you greater credibility, higher earning potential, and ultimately a seat at the leadership table. And that is what you need to be a business partner for the management.

Therefore the actual CMA exam contain 2 parts covering 12 competencies

Part 1: Financial Planning, Performance, Analytics

15% External Financial Reporting Decisions
20% Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting
20% Performance Management
15% Cost Management
15% Internal Controls
15% Technology and Analytics

Part 2: Strategic Financial Management

20% Financial Statement Analysis
20% Corporate Finance
25% Decision Analysis
10% Risk Management
10% Investment Decisions
15% Professional Ethics

Speaking of individual learning, you can take the CMA® Self Study Package with or without tutorials. Helpful hints also about the exam dates are provided in the 2 minute video, which you can also find in the left column on our seminar pages. The next CMA® 3-Day-Tutorial Part 1 seminar starts on 03.05.2021.

Successful further education in Corona times

The digital change does not stop at Covid-19. Quite the opposite. This makes it all the more important, especially in these times, to build up competencies for the future. After the successful test with the CMA tutorial, Dietmar Pascher completed Stage I – Controllers Best Practice as a hybrid seminar with participants from Spain, Australia, India, Tunisia, Germany, Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Sweden, Greece, Italy and Northern Macedonia a week ago. One of the main topics was the implementation of corridor planning and driver trees for forecasts and scenario simulations.

Due to the current business corona measures, Stage III -Reporting & Communication for Controllers will be held from 07. – 11.12.2020 as pure Online Training. The central topics are project controlling, success factor reporting, development of key performance indicators and controller as business partner and change agent.

Novelty – CMA Tutorials as hybrid event

Hybrid – the best of 2 worlds – converted to a seminar format

Due to the corona, some companies still have travel restrictions for employees. This also applies to necessary further training measures. The alternative are online trainings.

Even if online training, as we understand it at the CA controller akademie, does not mean that seminar participants experience lectures by a trainer on the computer all day long, there are individual, personal preferences as to why seminar participants prefer face-to-face seminars. For example, because of the personal communication, interaction and group dynamics as well as the exchange of experiences outside of the official seminar times.

CA Trainer Dietmar Pascher has taken a new path with the CMA Tutorial in September. In the real seminar room (in the Holiday Inn Munich Westpark) there were seminar participants and via a screen further seminar participants, who could not be present personally, were connected from their home offices for the complete course. And in contrast to a pure live stream, online participants also worked in group exercises and on case studies. The boundaries between presence and online participants quickly blurred and a natural interaction between all participants developed. A situation not unlike current developments, where home office employees and real-life meeting participants have to work together on a topic at the same time. The experiences from this hybrid seminar format were very positive on all sides, which was also documented in the feedback rounds.

Conclusion: An event format with future potential and another successful example of how to develop innovative offerings in a crisis.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

Currently 2 more hybrid seminars are planned:

Stage I Controllers Best Practice from October 12-16, 2020 in Feldafing
Sales controlling from 25 – 27.11.2020 in Munich

Are you a controlling professional thinking about an international career?

Then perhaps you are familiar with the CMA certification, the Certified Management Accountant. The Certified Management Accountant (CMA) is a globally recognized certification in controlling that was developed specifically to measure the accounting and financial management skills that drive business performance in global companies.

Due to the changing job profiles in controlling and the associated skills, the IMA (Institute of Management Accountants) will introduce new examination contents from 2020 and reweight familiar seminar contents.

Part 1 is now Financial Planning, Performance, and Analytics

Part 2 is now Strategic Financial Management

The CA controler akademie, as exclusive partner in Germany, takes this change into account and offers an extended seminar program for the CMA.

CMA® All Inclusive Package
CMA® Self Study Package without tutorials
CMA® 3-Day Tutorial Part 1
CMA® 3-Day Tutorial Part 2

The CMA® program allows students to continue self-study at their own pace. It is designed to be time efficient and cost effective.

Seat at the Table: Do You Have One?

Many controllers in the traditional persona feel they are situated at the margins of executive leadership, if they have a seat at the table at all. Just 14% of those in the traditional persona agreed with the statement: “The controllership function in my organization has a ‘seat at the table.’” In contrast, 33% of those in the strategic persona, the highest number in agreement, feel they do have a seat amongst executives.

To uncover why some controllers have a seat at the executive table while others are boxed into traditional roles, IMA and Deloitte surveyed nearly 800 (majority U.S.) financial professionals in the controllership function to learn how they are spending their time as opposed to where they should or would like to be spending their time. Questions were designed to shed insight on how they navigate the challenges of their role, what skills they feel they need to evolve, and how they can continue to add value to their companies.

Respondents were classified into three controllership personas based on the amount of time they spend in the traditional role of steward (managing risk and preserving assets) and operator (running an efficient and effective finance operation),

Traditional: Spend 75-100% of their time in the traditional role
Mixed: Spend 60-74% of their time in the traditional role
Strategic: Spend 0-59% of their time in the traditional role

Comparing responses between personas demonstrates the wide range of experiences controllers have even when they are working in similar industries or organizations. The top three obstacles that generated the most significant differences between personas were:

Focus on reducing the skill gap: The strategic persona cited this obstacle more often than the traditional persona (28% vs. 14%, respectively).
Lack of executive support: The traditional persona cited this obstacle more often than the strategic persona (36% vs. 21%).
Not part of their current role: The traditional persona cited this obstacle more often than the strategic persona (39% vs. 21%).

Obstacles faced were not significantly impacted by the size of the organization, industry, who the respondents report to, or their department’s ability to provide timely and accurate information.

The report concludes with ways strategic controllers stand out:

“Strategy” is part of their job description
Gain support of top management for resources they need
Focus on business’ strategy and effective communication
Commitment on growing current talent to reduce skill gap
Focus on leveraging new technology

No one likes to feel boxed in, especially accounting and finance professionals who have successfully executed their traditional responsibilities and aspire to do more for their organization. By following these critical steps, a controller can feel empowered to navigate the changing environment, find a seat at the table, and take their career to the next level.

About IMA and CMA®

IMA®, the association for accountants and financial professionals in business, is one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the accounting profession.

The CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) is the advanced professional certification specifically designed to measure the accounting and financial management skills that drive business performance in globally active organisations.

CA controller akademie is offering an instructor-led tutorial and two different exclusive CMA® packages

Closer collaboration between IMA and CA controller akademie

In a meeting between Institute of Management Accountants and the CA controller academy an extension of the cooperation was agreed. Important information for you was that content will change from 2020 on.

The updates result from the rapidly changing environmental conditions and are therfore also oriented to the changing job profile of the controller (management accounting). They will take effect on 1 January 2020.

Your benefit: IMA and CA controller academy complement each other, the diploma program of the CA controller academy is the benchmark in Europe, the IMA program is especially recognized in America, China, Turkey and the Arab world. Controllers complement and confirm their “Global Controller Competence” with the CMA.

The next CMA® 3-Day-Tutorial is from April 08 – April 10 in Frankfurt a.M.

From left to right: Dorothee Deyhle, Managing Director (CA), Ellen Gurevich, Head of Global Marketing (IMA), Bernardin Generalao, Partner Relations Manager DACH (IMA), Dietmar Pascher, Partner and (CMA) Trainer (CA) and Jim Gurowka, Head of Global Business Development (IMA).

Learn from experts: How to stay relevant in the digital age

In the current Strategic Finance Magazin Raef Lawson and Larry R. White have described a contribution on a topic that does not only concern accounting professionals – the question of what does digital evolution does mean for our profession.

Human tasks are increasingly being done by machines. A number is a value and that’s fact. But what relevance does that value have for corporate governance? They warn against “false information” and demand analogue thinking in a digital world. Users want information that reflects the causal relationships of the rated business scenario or decision. And they point out that skilled workers have to acquire the necessary knowledge in order to be fit for the future.

Both authors themselves have a lot of practical experience, ia. also in their functions at the IMA®.

IMA®, the association for accountants and financial professionals in business, is one of the largest and most respected associations focused exclusively on advancing the accounting profession. Globally, IMA supports the profession through research, the CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) program, continuing education, networking, and advocacy of the highest ethical business practices. IMA has a global network of more than 80,000 members in 140 countries and 300 local chapter communities. IMA provides localized services through its offices in USA, Switzerland, Dubai, UAE and China. In Germany, the CA controller akademie is excluvive partner of the IMA for a CMA preparation course.

The CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) is the advanced professional certification specifically designed to measure the accounting and financial management skills that drive business performance in globally active organisations. The CMA® is a tailor-made certification program for finance professionals at all levels in order to enhance their value to a current organisation or to expand their career potential. The CMA® program allows for participants to proceed with self-study at their own pace. It is designed to be time-efficient and cost-effective.

The next CMA® 3-Day-Tutorial of CA controller akademie will start at may 28th.