Tag: FD Module

Current as of October 12, 2026. Dates are CPA’s and subject to change.

Foundational Development is the first exam most candidates will write in the new CPA Professional Program. It’s five hours, it’s entirely objective format, and two thirds of the marks sit in testlets, a test format that’s new to CPA Canada.

In this post we cover who writes it and when, how it’s structured and what content is tested. Then we walk through an example testlet, so you can see what one looks like, and finish with what we think will be trickiest. A video version is coming soon on our YouTube channel. For all five exams at a high level, see Analyzing the New CPA Professional Program Exam Blueprints and its video.

At a glance

Item	Detail
Module	Module 1
Format	50 objective-format questions (33%) and 4 to 8 testlets (67%)
Time	5 hours
Reference materials available during the exam	CPA Canada Handbooks, Income Tax Act, Excise Tax Act
To pass	Sufficiency on financial reporting and management decision-making combined, and overall
Disclosed?	No
First sitting	September 15, 2027

Source: Exam Guide; CPA Western School of Business schedules.

Who writes it, and when

Once you meet the admission requirements, either through the Knowledge Assessment or the existing admission requirements, you start in Foundational Development, Module 1 of the program.

Milestone	Date
First module starts	May 15, 2027
First exam sitting	September 15, 2027
Then	January 19, May 17 and September 13, 2028

Source: CPA Western School of Business schedules.

Because 2027 is the first year of the program, there are no January or May sittings in 2027, only September. From 2028, exams will run in January, May and September. Under the Education and Experience Policies, you must write the exam within one year of finishing the module, with up to three attempts.

Structure

The exam is five hours long, and is made up of entirely objective format type questions. That gives students an average of two minutes per mark. There are two parts to the exam, as explained below.

Part	What it is	Weight
Stand-alone questions	50 objective-format questions	33%
Testlets	4 to 8 testlets, each designed to take 20 to 60 minutes	67%

A testlet is a set of questions built on one shared scenario: every question in it uses the same underlying information. Question types include multiple choice, multiple select, fill in the blank and drop-down list, and CPA says that list isn’t exhaustive (Exam Guide).

Content

Every topic area shows up on this exam.

Topic	Weight
Management decision-making	15 to 25%
Financial reporting	10 to 20%
Big data and data analytics	5 to 15%
Ethics and governance	5 to 15%
Finance	5 to 15%
Non-financial reporting	5 to 15%
Strategy, risk management and innovation	5 to 15%
Assurance and trust	5 to 10%
Tax	5 to 10%
Value creation	May be integrated into the other topics

Source: Exam Guide.

Management decision-making covers areas like management accounting, costing, performance, and IT and AI solutions. Here it’s at the “analyze” level: budgets and forecasts against strategy, variances, choosing a costing method, relevant costing decisions (make-or-buy, product mix and capacity, keep-or-drop, sell-or-process-further), pricing, performance and incentives, and IT and AI solutions, including privacy legislation and AI regulation (Module Guide).

The module also introduces the foundational topics, like economics and law, and the sub-foundational ones, like emerging technologies.

The level. CPA describes this module as applying competencies “at low levels of proficiency” and “in a directed manner”. In practice, the learning outcomes are a mix: many of the Decision Competencies are at identify or apply, while technical areas like management decision-making are at analyze, which is Level 3 on CPA’s five-level scale (Module Guide).

This is also the first exam that assesses the 24 Decision Competencies. The Knowledge Assessment doesn’t, which makes sense as the KA is an entrance exam, not the CPA program itself. We’ll cover the Decision Competencies in a later post.

Passing and reference materials

To pass, you need to demonstrate sufficiency on financial reporting and management decision-making combined, and also demonstrate sufficiency on the overall exam.

It’s a non-disclosed exam. Our reading is that we won’t get these exams after each sitting, the way CFE exams are released. Instead it will work like Core and PEP today, where the exams aren’t publicly released. CPA doesn’t define the term in the Exam Guide.

From this exam on, you get reference materials: the CPA Canada Handbooks, the Income Tax Act and the Excise Tax Act.

How a testlet works: an example

Testlets are two thirds of this exam, so here’s what one looks like. It’s our illustration, not a CPA sample.

Question	Working	Answer
1. Break-even	$120,000 ÷ ($50 − $30)	6,000 units
2. Special order	2,000 × ($40 − $30)	$20,000
3. What to consider	The real risk is pressure on the regular price	A

For question 3, allocated fixed costs and the original equipment cost don’t change with the decision, and last year’s income isn’t relevant.

What this shows. All three questions come from one scenario, but none of them needs the answer to another. Each question uses different facts, and one fact isn’t needed at all.

Fact	Used in
Price, $50 a unit	Question 1
Variable cost, $30 a unit	Questions 1 and 2
Fixed costs, $120,000 a year	Question 1
Special order, 2,000 units at $40	Questions 2 and 3
Expected sales, 10,000 units	Not needed

So with a testlet, start by reading the facts and the context carefully. Then work out which facts each question actually needs. CPA hasn’t published how testlets are marked, and in CPA’s sample questions, each question in the testlet draws on the scenario facts on its own.

What we think will be trickiest

Our read of the blueprint, not CPA’s. It’s here to give you a feel for the exam, not to tell you how to study.

The breadth. Every topic area is on this one exam, and none is worth more than 25%. There’s nothing you can afford to leave out. From our experience in coaching candidates, the volume of content required here is likely to cause some overwhelm even if the level of proficiency required remains on the lower side.

Answers you type in. Multiple choice is predictable: you can rule options out, and a guess still has a one-in-four chance on a four-option question. When you have to put your own number on the line, that safety net is gone. You know it or you don’t, and statistically you don’t benefit from the chance to guess.

Multiple select. These ask you to judge every option, not just spot the best one. That’s harder when you only half know a topic. In CPA’s sample, they’re also worth more: 4 and 5 marks each.

The good news. This is the most predictable exam in the program. CPA has published the topics and the level for each, and an objective-format exam rewards preparation you can plan. Of the four required exams, it’s the one we feel most confident about preparing for. And for the most part, candidates prefer the structure and familiarity of objective format over case writing. For anyone feeling overwhelmed by the technical breadth, one small saving grace is not having to apply the case-writing strategies the CFE is known for, yet.

The other piece of good news is that this exam does not yet introduce case writing. Now, at GCPA we’re big fans of case writing, but from the student perspective this gives students a chance to focus on the broad reach of the technical requirements, without also learning an entirely new style of reading and writing an exam.

The bottom line

Foundational Development is five hours, objective format, with two thirds of the marks in testlets.

Next in this series: CPA Core, where the cases start.

CPA resources

• CPA Professional Program Exam Guide, issued August 27, 2026
• CPA Professional Program Module Guide, issued August 25, 2026
• Sample Foundational Development questions
• Examinations and sample exams, CPA Western School of Business
• Exam schedules, CPA Western School of Business

Links as at October 19, 2026.