NBE Arts common mistakes
NBE Arts · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering FTC Funeral Rule items from a general sense of fairness rather than from the rule's stated trigger points - for example, saying the General Price List may simply be handed over 'when the family gets around to asking,' or assuming a firm may refuse to handle a casket the family purchased elsewhere.
Candidates study the Funeral Rule as a narrative paragraph and never convert it into a checklist of events ('arrangements discussion begins,' 'consumer asks about prices in person,' 'merchandise is displayed'). Without an anchor event, they fall back on intuition about good customer service, which is often stricter or looser than the actual regulation.
What to do instead
Build a one-page trigger sheet before practice questions: list (a) the exact moments the GPL must be offered or given, (b) every item that must be itemized and every disclosure that must appear, and (c) the practices the rule prohibits, including requiring a package and charging a handling fee for a family-supplied casket. For each practice question, name the trigger event first, then answer.
Reversing debit and credit on routine entries - for example, recording a merchandise sale by debiting Sales Revenue and crediting Accounts Receivable, or crediting an asset when cash is received.
Candidates memorize 'debit means left' or 'debit means increase' as a word-association habit instead of tracing the effect of the transaction on the accounting equation and the normal balance of each account type.
What to do instead
Before writing the entry, state in words which account increases and which decreases, then apply the normal balance rule (assets and expenses rise on the debit side; liabilities, equity, and revenue rise on the credit side). Verify that total debits equal total credits and that the equation A = L + E still holds.
Computing a markup as though it were a margin - pricing a casket that cost $1,000 at $1,400 when the item asked for a 40% margin on selling price, which requires $1,666.67.
The two formulas look interchangeable in casual speech ('I marked it up 40 percent'), and candidates compute without ever writing down which figure is the base. Under time pressure they grab the easier multiplication.
What to do instead
Write the base on the scratch pad before computing: cost-based equations divide by cost, price-based equations divide by (1 - margin). Then prove the answer backwards - recompute gross profit as a percentage of the answer you produced and confirm it matches the percentage in the stem.
Choosing the option that gives advice, reassurance, or a personal opinion when the stem describes a grieving family member in a counseling scenario.
These responses feel helpful and are what a well-meaning person actually says at a visitation; candidates answer as themselves rather than as a counselor applying a defined technique.
What to do instead
Rank response types before the exam: reflection of feeling, reflection of content, open-ended question, closed question, advice, cliché or false reassurance. In any counseling item, eliminate advice and reassurance first, then select the response that names the feeling back to the speaker without evaluating it.
Using bereavement, grief, and mourning as synonyms - for example, describing mourning as 'the internal emotional response to loss' or grief as 'the socially prescribed period of behavior.'
In everyday speech the three words overlap almost completely, so candidates rely on ordinary usage instead of the textbook definitions the exam tests, and the distractor options are written to reward that blur.
What to do instead
Memorize a three-line distinction and apply it every time: bereavement is the objective state or event of having lost someone; grief is the internal, multifaceted reaction; mourning is the outward, culturally patterned expression and ritual. Build a similar contrast drill for mores versus folkways and ethnocentrism versus cultural relativism.
Treating the five stages of dying as a required, sequential sequence that every bereaved person must pass through, and selecting options that describe a survivor as 'in denial' or 'past bargaining' simply because of the elapsed time since the death.
The stages are the most widely publicized grief framework in popular culture, so they are the easiest thing to recall and the easiest to misuse; candidates substitute cultural familiarity for the theoretical limits of the model.
What to do instead
Build a comparison grid with columns for Kübler-Ross's stages, Bowlby's phases, and Worden's tasks of mourning, and note in each row whether the framework was developed for the dying person or for the survivor, and whether it is prescriptive or descriptive. Any exam option that makes a stage mandatory or time-bound is a distractor.
Selecting a promotional tactic that ignores the market the stem describes - for example, recommending a premium hardwood casket campaign for a firm whose stated service area is cremation-dominant and price-sensitive.
Candidates answer the question they expect ('what does a successful funeral home advertise?') instead of the question asked, and they pick the option that sounds most like the industry's traditional self-image.
What to do instead
Restate the stem's target segment, price position, and service mix in the margin before reading the options, then eliminate any option that contradicts one of those three facts. Answer marketing-mix items by naming which 'P' the option belongs to and whether it matches the position the firm has chosen.
Choosing the option that best protects the firm from liability or gives the family whatever it demands, when the item explicitly asks what is ethically appropriate, or confusing the roles of the two when the item asks for both.
Candidates conflate law with ethics because the exam asks about both in similar scenario language, and because 'keep the firm out of trouble' feels like a safe default. As a result they miss options that satisfy the client while still telling the truth.
What to do instead
Read the stem's final clause first and label the question as legal, ethical, or both. For ethical items, name the governing principle in the margin (veracity, confidentiality, informed consent, nonmaleficence, duty to the profession) and select the option that satisfies that principle while preserving client choice; reject any option that would require a false statement, even if the refusal costs the sale.
Misreading span-of-control and authority items - for example, describing an embalmer or a bookkeeper position as a line function because the person 'tells people what to do,' or assuming a wide span of control is always better.
Candidates judge by the employee's technical confidence or seniority rather than by whether the position sits in the chain of command that carries out the primary purpose of the business.
What to do instead
Apply a two-question test to every position in an organizational scenario: does this role appear in the chain of command that produces the core service, and can it issue binding orders to subordinates? If both are yes, it is line; if the role only advises or supports, it is staff. For span-of-control items, tie the answer to task similarity, location, and the experience of the subordinates rather than to a preference for flat or tall structures.
Picking the response that explains, rationalizes, or philosophizes about the death instead of the one that acknowledges the speaker's feeling and invites the speaker to say more.
Candidates correctly rule out clichés and false reassurance, but then treat the remaining 'substantive' option as the sophisticated choice, without recognizing that it still blocks the speaker from continuing.
What to do instead
Label the function of each remaining option (inform, explain, question, reflect, hesitate) and default to reflect-and-invite-open-question. Reject any option containing 'why' as the opening move, any option that begins with a generalization about how people usually feel, and any option that shifts the subject to the funeral director's own experience.