CFBE study plan

Draft a one-page fraud risk governance map that assigns board, audit committee, CRO, and business-unit ownership for each element of the fraud risk management cycle

Distinguish the roles of prevention, detection, and response controls and classify 15 example controls into those three categories without error

Build a fraud risk assessment worksheet that scores inherent likelihood and impact for 12 fraud schemes and computes residual risk after named controls

Identify the data sources a fraud analytics program needs (general ledger, vendor master, payroll, access logs) and note the owner and refresh cadence for each

Write five fraud-detection analytics tests (duplicate payments, round-dollar amounts, after-hours postings, vendor bank-detail changes, dormant-account activity) and state the data fields each requires

Design a segregation-of-duties matrix for the procure-to-pay and payroll cycles and flag every incompatible combination you can construct

Explain how to evaluate a control as designed versus operating effectively, using at least two evidence types per conclusion

Diagnose three common control-design weaknesses (generic access, override rights, unreviewed master-data changes) and propose a specific remediation for each

Deconstruct at least eight earnings-manipulation techniques (premature revenue recognition, channel stuffing, reserve manipulation, capitalization of costs, bill-and-hold, cookie-jar reserves, related-party sales, journal-entry smoothing) and name the red-flag ratio or pattern for each

Compute and interpret accruals-to-revenue, days-sales-outstanding trend, asset-turnover, and gross-margin anomalies on a sample dataset

Map the three conditions of the fraud triangle to specific cash, inventory, and payroll misappropriation schemes

Trace how a fictitious vendor, ghost employee, and skimming scheme each appear in the books and which control would interrupt each

Outline a third-party due-diligence workflow from onboarding through periodic refresh, naming the screening sources and escalation triggers at each stage

Identify bid-rigging, split-purchase, and change-order abuse indicators and the data comparisons that would expose each

Distinguish a bribe, a facilitation payment, and a legitimate gift or hospitality using a written decision rule with thresholds and approval requirements

Design a conflict-of-interest disclosure and monitoring process, including how to screen vendor and employee master data against each other

Classify the main cyber-fraud and payment schemes (business email compromise, authorized push payment fraud, card-not-present, account takeover, synthetic identity) and state the control point that stops each

Draft an evidence-handling protocol covering chain of custody, hashing, preservation requests, and handling of digital artifacts

Prepare an interview plan with a question sequence moving from background to admission-seeking, and list the legal and ethical boundaries to respect

Explain how to document an investigation file so that findings, evidence, and conclusions are separately supportable

Re-score your week-1 risk register against what you now know and justify every changed rating

Run a full mock analytics review on a practice dataset and document exceptions, false positives, and follow-up steps

Re-test your SoD matrix against compensating controls and identify which conflicts remain unmitigated

Write a short governance memo recommending program improvements with owners, timelines, and success measures

Work through timed question sets on financial statement fraud, asset misappropriation, procurement fraud, and corruption, and log every miss by root cause

Re-derive the ratio and red-flag logic behind each missed question until you can explain it without notes

Build a one-page comparison of scheme types showing who typically perpetrates each, how it is concealed, and how it is detected

Identify your three weakest sub-topics across these domains and write targeted remediation notes for each

Complete two full-length timed practice exams under exam conditions and record section-level scores

Review every incorrect answer and confirm you can state the reasoning for the correct choice in one sentence

Recite from memory the key frameworks (fraud risk management cycle, fraud triangle, SoD principles, evidence-handling steps) without reference material

Finalize a one-page exam-day strategy covering time allocation, question triage, and flag-and-return rules