A sit-down with our CFA® guide for Ethics and Professional Standards.

 

How to study for Ethics in CFA® Program?

Most of the candidates find it really difficult to understand what should be the correct approach to study ethics in all three levels of the CFA® course. As level 1 is considered, the best strategy for a candidate would be to cover ethics at the end once the entire syllabus is over i.e., when the rest of the nine topics are over then the candidate should start covering ethics and it should be at least two months prior to the exams.

Since ethics is purely theoretical, how should we go about it? Shall we start mugging all these standards and their content?

No, mugging up is not going to help, what is important for you to understand is when you are studying for ethics or when you are solving the questions of ethics you have to have the frame of mind of “Raja Harishchandra” who is known for his honesty and truthfulness and the most important thing is not assuming anything on your own while the solving questions of ethics. Whatever is given in the question should act as a commandment for you.

Make sure that you don’t try and mug up anything because mugging up is not going to help.

From where we should study ethics?

So, if you are studying ethics what you should do,

·        First you should cover up from Schweser material that is given, so from the Schweser material, you can cover up the entire ethics portion, make sure you refer to all the examples that are given in the Schweser material

·        Once you are done with the Schweser material then you can start solving questions that are given in the Schweser material and then on a daily basis you can start solving 10 questions

·        If you are finishing up two months prior to the examination you have almost 60 days in hand. In 60 days if you are solving 10 questions daily so all in all you will be practicing 600 questions before exam. You need to ensure that you are not only solving question from Schweser material but you can also solve the questions from Schweser question bank and attempt all the questions which are given at the end of the chapter in the CFA®  curriculum.

·        Along with that what is more important that you refer to all the examples which are given in the CFA® curriculum for ethics because those examples are very relevant as far as ethics is concerned because you might encounter such kind of questions, not exactly a similar question but such kind of questions in CFA®exam.

We tend to forget whatever we have studied in ethics. What to do?

If you are trying to ensure that once you have studied ethics then the entire concept is there in the mind then it won’t happen, you will be able to retain only with practicing questions and there is no shortcut to it.

Shall we solve the questions of ethics at the end of the chapter? Let’s say there are 135 minutes in the exam so shall we solve the questions in the end or shall we attempt the questions in the beginning?

I will suggest going with the flow, with the order, so if ethics questions are there in the beginning attempt at the beginning itself.

If 27 questions out of 180 questions are there in CFA® level 1, how much time we should devote to solving ethics questions in the exam?

I will suggest that you can cover the entire ethics in half an hour and a maximum of 35 minutes because the time saved in ethics will help you to devote more time to other topics like FRA and Fixed Income. Once the person passes level 1 and goes to level 2 then the syllabus of ethics is almost similar, there are no changes only the difficulty level increases. The syllabus of ethics in CFA® level 1, 2, 3 is almost similar, only there are few additions in level 2 and level 3 but the professional standards remain the same.