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Best approach to study Auditing in CAP2

  • 15-07-2011 8:19pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 98 ✭✭


    Hello all,

    I am doing Auditing in CAP2 and I don't know where to start or what approach to use.

    There is so much material to cover - text and all the standards.

    For those who have done this before, could you give me any info or tips on what approach worked for you?

    Should I summarise the ISA's on one page, read the text or what?

    Anything at all would be much appreciated.
    Tagged:


Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 1,977 ✭✭✭steve_r


    I had to repeat this subject last year, so I thought I'd share some of the mistakes I made, so you can avoid falling into the traps I fell into.
    1. I didn't have enough of a practical understanding of the reasons why certain audit proceedures are done. I don't work in audit so I was just relying on what I had read technically. I'd suggest speaking to someone (maybe a senior or even a manager), who can guide you with any areas you are struggling with.
    2. You must apply the technical information. The first time I sat the exam I knew all the standards and notes inside out, but had no idea how they were used in a real-life situation. Knowing the notes and standards is only part of the battle.
    3. Practice as many exam questions as you can in exam conditions. I found it useful to group the questions by topic in a folder (i.e. going concern, controls weakness etc). This helped me identify patterns within the questions, and showed how the same topic can be asked in different ways.
    I'm sure others will have advice, and by all means feel free to disagree with the points above. As I said, I failed it first time around so there's probably better people to get advice from!


  • Registered Users Posts: 98 ✭✭techman


    Thanks a million steve_r for the info.

    Looking towards the exam in early October, time may be against me. Nothing done in Auditing yet.

    How did you approach learning the ISA's? Did you summarise each one?

    Thanks again.


  • Registered Users Posts: 74 ✭✭Ciara471


    I failed it 3 times purely from not knowing how to approach studying it. The fourth time was much better.

    Try to organise your notes according to how you would perform an audit. So the first section would be planning. The last section would be audit reports, post year end events, things like that.

    So when you have decided on how you're going to section it then get a list of all the standards that are on the course and pick which section each standard is most suited to and divide them up that way.

    Then try and build up a question bank according to each section. In the book I had last year there was an exam question summary which had all the past exam questions divided according to section (this might actually help you out with dividing your notes into sections too. It takes a while to get your notes together this way but it was well worth it.

    Then for each section try and get your hands on summarised standards, they're quite long to read and summaries are normally more than sufficient but it's time consuming to do them yourself. So then you'll have each section with a list of the standards appropriate to that section and a question bank for that section alone.

    Don't spend too much time trying to learn the standards. A quick read will be enough to get the information fresh in your head and then you'll learn it more by doing the question banks.

    I know it's been said a million times before but don't look at the solutions when you're attempting the questions. Forcing yourself to try to answer given the time is really useful.

    Another thing I did was for each of the question banks I had a list of what questions were in it. If there was a question I did really terrible in I marked it, or a question that I thought covered the topic really well I marked that too. Then a week later go back to that section and try those questions again.

    I spent 3 weeks just doing it this was and I passed comfortably.That's just my advice anyway. Best of luck in it. It's a horrible exam, I was so sick of sitting it.


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