CFE Study Partner: How to Find One and Mark Cases

A CFE study partner is a candidate writing the same sitting of the Common Final Examination as you. Ideally you share a Day 1 case and a Day 2 role. You each write one practice simulation alone and timed, then swap and mark against the official guide. CPA schools' peer study lists and practice-case sessions are where candidates find each other.

The last CFE sittings, as of November 2026

The CFE is three days of case writing: 4 hours on Day 1, 5 on Day 2 and 4 on Day 3, each starting at 9 a.m. (CPA Western School of Business). Day 1 is connected to the case you worked on in Capstone 1. Days 2 and 3 test the depth and breadth of what you built in the Professional Education Program (PEP). First-time writers must sit all three days in the same offering.

PEP is closing. In the new CPA Professional Program, offered from 2027, three Professional Final Exams "will replace the current module exams and the Common Final Examination" (CPA Québec). What's left of the CFE is in September:

The dates come from CPA Atlantic School of Business. "The final two CFE offerings are September 2027 and September 2028," says CPAWSB's transition page, updated October 20, 2026. There will be no May offerings. CPA Québec's calendar agrees: anyone unable to write in September 2028 moves to the new program.

Two things follow. Everyone still in PEP is aiming at the same two dates, so look for someone on your exact September. And a partner who misses part of the exam in 2027 has one CFE left to try again.

Four things to share with a CFE study partner

1. The sitting. September 2027 or September 2028.
2. The Day 1 case. Day 1 builds on your Capstone 1 case, and there's more than one. Each of CPAWSB's Day 1 webinars covers "one Day 1 case offered during the CFE" (CFE support). Someone on another case can mark your response but can't rehearse its facts with you.
3. The Day 2 role. You pick Assurance, Finance, Performance Management or Tax, and the role is tested "at the elective level" (CPAWSB). Day 2 also has a common part. CPA Ontario's sample report on the September 2024 CFE comments on a candidate's "Assurance section" and "Common section" separately. Two roles still share Day 3 and that common part.
4. The days you're writing. Day 1 is reported apart from Days 2 and 3, and you rewrite only the part you failed. Pass Day 1 alone and you enrol for Days 2 and 3 next time; pass Days 2 and 3 alone and you write Day 1 again (CPA Ontario). A Day 1 rewriter and a first-timer overlap for one day of three.

Lists, boards and practice cases that pair candidates

The schools that deliver PEP run their own matching, so start there:

• CPAWSB's Peer Study List. Before each session, CPAWSB invites learners to join. Those who consent share a first name, an email address and a location with the others on it (Peer Studying). The page also reminds members that the CPA Canada Plagiarism Policy applies: mark each other's work, never reuse each other's words.
• The module's discussion board. The optional Introduction to Capstone 2 and the CFE module includes "an unmonitored discussion board" for study plans and study groups, at CPAWSB and at CPA Atlantic. Unmonitored means nobody checks who posts, so keep the first exchanges on the board or in email.
• A peer-marked practice case. Once a year, CPAWSB lets September writers "write a practice CFE case and receive peer marking and feedback", marking another candidate's response in turn. It's open to candidates from the Atlantic provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Whoever you mark there is already doing a partner's job.
• Your office. Ask colleagues in training who registered for the same September, and in which role.
• StudyDuo. Find Partners has no CFE interest; pick Accounting or CPA instead. Filter by country and city, then message people to ask about their sitting and role.

Mark it the way CPA's reviewers report it

CPA Canada posts past CFE simulations with their guides, linked from CPA Atlantic's CFE page. A guide lists each case's assessment opportunities (AOs). Two public samples show how reviewers then read a response.

The first is the Automated Feedback Report that goes to every candidate who fails Day 1. CPA Ontario's sample, from the September 2023 CFE, is built on three summative AOs: situational analysis, analysis of major issues, and conclusions and recommendations. It separates breadth, discussing "a sufficient number of the case facts", from depth, spelling out what those facts imply. The second is the Performance Analysis Report for Days 2 and 3, which candidates can request. It goes AO by AO, then answers five general questions about each simulation. Put both on one sheet:

Fill in the first four for every AO. Answer the last four once per case. Only then decide, AO by AO, whether the response reached the guide's standard.

Why the yes-or-no checks come first

Specific checks help two markers agree; a general impression doesn't. At Stellenbosch University's School of Accountancy, two third-year students marked each classmate's project. The lecturer then re-marked the work of the 111 students in the study (Kruger, South African Journal of Higher Education, 2025). Audit working papers were marked on 28 specific criteria, such as testing for obsolete stock. A management accounting report had seven questions, one of them a general impression worth 3 of its 10 marks:

With the checklist, one classmate agreed with the lecturer as well as two did. With the impression mark, a single marker could be far off, and classmates were generous. The report averaged 83.4% from them and 76.1% from the lecturer, and the impression mark alone made up 5.79 of that 7.29-point gap. It's one course in South Africa, not the CFE. Still, it argues for ticking the sheet's boxes before you judge an AO. When you and your CFE study partner disagree, settle it against the guide's wording, never by splitting the difference.

Write, wait, mark, talk: the weekly loop

1. Pick one past simulation from CPA Canada's list: a Day 2 case in your shared role, or a Day 3 case if your roles differ.
2. Write it alone, for the full time. Read and plan before you type. In Ronald Kellogg's experiments, writers who prepared an outline produced documents that judges rated higher. An outline held in the head worked as well as a written one (Kellogg, 1988).
3. Swap the next day. Waiting costs you little. In two experiments in an upper-level engineering course, feedback on weekly homework came either at once or a week after the deadline. The students who waited did better on new exam problems, though they rated immediate feedback as more helpful (Mullet and colleagues, 2014).
4. Mark with the sheet, then with the guide. Write the box ticked and one line of evidence beside each AO.
5. Talk for 30 minutes, with sound: only the AOs where your two judgments differ, then the four general questions.
6. Keep a log of boxes ticked. After four or five cases it shows whether you lose AOs by skipping them, by thin depth or by running out of time.

A five-hour Day 2 case belongs on a day off. Day 3's cases are shorter: the September 2024 sample report covers three of them in Day 3's four hours, so one fits an evening. If you work full time, our plan for an exam around a full-time job sets the weekly hours.

After results: who writes what next

Results for September 2026 come out on December 4. If you both passed, you're done. If not, the split shapes the next round:

• One of you passed Day 1, the other Days 2 and 3. Each rewrites a different part in September 2027, so you write no day in common. Keep marking each other anyway: the sheet works on any day's response.
• One of you rewrites Day 1 only. CPA Atlantic lets Day 1-only rewriters enrol in a Day 1-only version of Capstone 2.
• One of you passed everything. Ask them to stay on as a marker for one more sitting. They know what a passing response looks like.
• Three tries are the limit in Ontario. After a third unsuccessful attempt, CPA Ontario deregisters a PEP student. And after September 2028 there is no CFE left to sit.

What makes your comments useful to the other person is in How to Be a Good Study Partner.

Writing and reviewing online

StudyDuo's Focus Room covers the writing hours: people working on camera, each with a task under their name, and no sound. Signing up gives you 14 days of Premium with no cap; after that, the free plan's video is an hour a day. For a review call, a 1:1 session has sound. You put a time on the 1:1 board, for right away or a later day this week, and only people with a verified photo can join. Follow each other, and the app tells you when your CFE study partner starts studying.