Accounting body scraps remote exams to combat cheating

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The world’s largest accounting body decided to cancel remote exams to combat the rise in cases of student cheating when taking exams remotely.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, which has 257,900 members, will end its online exams from March, requiring candidates to take assessments in person unless there are exceptional circumstances, Helen Brand, the association’s chief executive, told the Financial Times.

Remote proctoring was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow students to continue qualifying for the profession during lockdowns.

But ACCA has concluded that online exams are becoming too difficult for police, especially as artificial intelligence has made fighting cheating more difficult.

“We see the complexity [cheating] systems beyond what can be put in place, [in] “Collateral terms,” Brand said.

The accounting profession has been hit by a series of fraud scandals involving thousands of employees, with companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Deloitte imposing multi-million dollar fines in the United States, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.

EY agreed to pay a record $100 million to US regulators in 2022 over allegations that dozens of its employees cheated on an ethics test and that the company then misled investigators.

Internal corporate exams – designed to keep employees up to date on areas such as accounting standards and professional ethical requirements – are separate from those administered by ACCA and other accounting bodies, which candidates must pass in order to qualify for the profession.

ACCA, which has more than 500,000 students, has worked “extensively” to combat cheating, but “people who want to do bad things may be working at a faster pace,” Brand said.

One student currently sitting for ACCA exams told the Financial Times that a friend was able to cheat by photographing exam questions and then feeding the images into an AI chatbot to get help.

ACCA said that although it was confident that its processes protected the integrity of its exams, rapid technological advances had pushed things to a “tipping point”.

Another student said it was a “huge relief” to take exams from home while pregnant and avoid driving six hours to the nearest exam centre. “At this point in my life, I don’t really think I would have been able to attend exams or lectures in person,” she said.

In the UK, the accounting regulator warned firms in 2022 that it had uncovered multiple cases of exam misconduct. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a professional body for training accountants, said in 2024 that reports of fraud were still increasing.

“There are very few high-risk tests being allowed now [remote invigilation]“The ICAEW, which also trains accountants around the world, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland still allow some exams to be taken online,” Brand said.

While technology has made it easier to cheat on remote exams, Brand said some students are still cheating on in-person tests: “Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not just about technology. There are other ways…formulas at your fingertips, things in your sock, God knows what – mirrors and everything.”

ACCA’s shift to in-person testing comes even as it overhauls its key qualifications for the first time in a decade to include a greater focus on emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and data science.

Brand said that artificial intelligence “has radically changed” the skills required of accountants. Companies, including the Big Four, are investing heavily in AI-powered tools to improve their efficiency.

This would pose a “challenge” for junior auditors to gain practical experience, so the new ACCA modules will simulate real-time scenarios, aiming to train students to apply skepticism to dynamic problems “more than just a static test”, Brand said.