Introduction
Hey, hey, fellow adventurers! Blaziker is here for a rather special article, one that relates to both my love for theatrical animation and my real-life profession as an auditor (who is also a secondee tax agent).
For those unaware, working in an accounting-based position, whether as a regular accountant, a tax accountant or like me, an external auditor working in an international audit firm, can be a challenge, but it is a very fulfilling experience, one that has meaning for me as I can contribute to my engagement clients in the audit firm.
Having been in the firm for two and a half years, I also had to accomplish professional accreditation in the accounting industry, and there are loads and loads of professional accreditations to choose from. One of the most prestigious professional accountancy bodies (and most challenging of them all) is the UK-based Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (or ACCA for short), of which I am currently under.
So today, in this special article, I will be talking about my journey as an ACCA student with the help of four animated movies because, of course, as a “certified” animated movie adventurer myself, they had an influence on my ACCA student journey.
But first, a brief about the ACCA qualification:
The ACCA Qualification (In Summary)
Basically, to become an ACCA member, you would need to clear the following conditions:
- Pass all 13 ACCA examinations across three difficulty levels
- Attain 3 years of professional experience in a relevant accounting-based job
- Pass the online-only Ethics and Professional Skills module
Note that if you only passed the 13 ACCA exams, you will be considered an Affiliate and would need to clear the other two conditions to become a member which, spoiler alert, is where I currently am now.
However, for this article, as I am only a few months away from meeting the 3 years requirement and I had passed the Ethics and Professional Skills module long before I even started on my exams, I will be focusing on my ACCA exams journey, and not all 13 of them because my university degree had exempted me from 9 of the exams in the lower Applied Knowledge and Applied Skills levels (and that I had applied and paid the exemption fees beforehand). Instead, I will focus on the other 4 exams at the highest difficulty level: the Strategic Professional level.
The Strategic Professional Examinations
While the requirement to clear this level is to pass four exams at the relatively hard-to-pass level, the specific requirement is to pass the following exams (a pass mark is a simple 50 out of 100 marks):
- Strategic Business Leader
- Strategic Business Reporting
- Two of the following options exams: Advanced Audit and Assurance, Advanced Financial Management, Advanced Performance Management and Advanced Taxation
In all exams, the average pass rate of these exams is around 50% or below. This is because the exams require a more advanced approach in answering the sometimes hard to understand questions set in the paper and that simple regurgitation of relevant concepts or generic answers do not score points at all. To succeed, adapting and applying the concepts to the questions and proper time management are the key to passing the exams, which can be easier said than done.
So, for the four Strategic Professional exams, I will briefly discuss each of them, as well as the animated movie I watched in the lead-up or in one case just after the exam and what I learnt from each of the four movies, including how they are relevant to my ACCA student journey. Also, as a warning, there are slight spoilers ahead for all these movies, so I will try to keep the spoilers to as little as possible if you had not seen any of the movies before.
So, with that, let’s jump right into my first exam:
Strategic Business Leader: Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (June 2022)
The Exam
- Date of Exam: 7 June 2022
- Pass Rate: 50%
Strategic Business Leader (SBL), from the previous format that I sat through, is a four-hour case study paper with no pre-seen material provided prior to the exam, unlike in the current format (pre-seen material provided, duration reduced to 3 hours and 15 minutes) centring around a company and as a consultant hired by the said company, you are tasked to provide relevant solutions to a variety of issues and challenges facing the company. The issues could vary from suggesting useful corporate strategies, improving corporate governance and project management, improving the company’s IT environment and fixing internal control issues, and embracing environmental reporting. The total marks awarded is 100, 80 of which are technical marks for correct application of relevant content, and 20 professional skills marks if the response hits the relevant professional skills requirement stated in the question.
If you can get through the previous paragraph, you would think that this exam is very voluminous, and you are right. However, what matters more is applying the relevant concepts in the correct format, as the answering of these questions is usually in the form of reports, briefing notes and sometimes, even presentation slides. Compared to other exams, this is the movie that requires the least amount of accounting knowledge to pass the exam.
That said, because there are a wide variety of questions and different skills to master, SBL is as equally challenging as the other Strategic Professional Papers, but one that is fulfilling and relevant if you are considering a consultancy career, since most of the skills applied in the exam will be relevant in a consultancy job.
Personally, of the four Strategic Professional papers I attempted, this is my most favourite. In fact, I enjoyed exploring a variety of companies tested in the exams, whether it is a charity, a clothing store or a cloud computing company, there is always something in the case studies that made it a very enjoyable exam for me.
The Movie
- Date of Screening: 6 June 2022 (1 Day Before Exam)
- Cinema: Golden Village Suntec City
- IMDb score: 6.3/10
- Letterboxd score: 2.7/5
- Review link: Click here
For those that followed me on various social media websites, you may be familiar about my coverage of a certain animated movie called Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness. I will be honest with you: it might be the lowest scored movie of the four movies I will briefly discuss here, but this is a rather relevant movie to the exam at hand.
For sentimental reasons, I relate to Chickenhare a lot because I am different from the regular society from Singapore and from young, I was ostracised for my traits in school, which they dismissed them as a ‘quirk’. While my grades during my childhood had been very solid (especially in my favourite subjects of English, Mathematics, Social Studies, History and Biology) and I was part of the school’s track and field team, I was unfavourably treated just because of who I am. Hence, when Chickenhare declared that “I don’t want to be special, I just want to be normal”, that line hit me real hard because I wanted to be judged the same way as everyone else, though this may not always be the case.
However, as the movie progresses and Chickenhare embraced his differences and use them to his advantage, just like him, I used my quirks to my advantage and excel from polytechnic onwards. I was able to cope better with my studies and club activities and enjoy being with other students and tutors, and I enjoyed my life in polytechnic. In fact, the more I ventured on with my life, the more I have a connection with Chickenhare.
So yeah, if there was one thing Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness taught me, it is to embrace and accept the imperfections in me and use those imperfections to motivate me to soar above the competition, which was exactly what I did during this exam, scoring the highest for the Singapore cohort in that session. Spoiler alert, this would not be the last…
(Oh, and by the way, Chickenhare will be having a sequel slated to release in 2025)
Strategic Business Reporting: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (December 2022)
The Exam
- Date of Exam: 7 December 2022
- Pass rate: 47%
Strategic Business Reporting (SBR) is the first Strategic Professional I took that has a direct relationship with accounting as it tests candidates on how they utilise various International Financial Reporting Standards and apply to the questions properly, and these Standards can range from relatively simple concepts such as fair value measurements to more complex topics like classification and impairment of financial assets and consolidation accounting.
This exam has four questions divided into two sections as follows:
- Section A, Question 1: Group accounting, which has elements of consolidation accounting, relevant accounting standards and sometimes generation of Consolidated Statement of Cash Flow, 40 marks in total (of which 4 are professional skills marks related to specific format used in the response).
- Section A, Question 2: Ethics questions focusing on ethical implications of incorrect usage of accounting standards, 10 marks in total.
- Section B, Question 1: Accounting standards question focusing on pure application of relevant accounting standards, 25 marks in total.
- Section B, Question 2: Wildcard question, requiring application of accounting standards in a unique situation, 25 marks in total.
Compared to SBL, SBR requires more understanding of the accounting standards in order to even apply them into the questions and since the difficulty of these standards can vary from simple to very hard, I have to study and understand each standard differently in order to at least grasp an understanding of them. Therefore, this is a more difficult exam for me compared to SBL.
With that said, compared to SBL when my entire course was held online because of the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, this time I was able to attend classes at the tuition centre even though students can opt to attend classes online. I attended classes on-site so that I can ask the tutor in charge directly rather than relying on the chat system to ask questions, which may result in delays in getting responses from the tutor.
In addition, the tutor (Mr Sami) is an exceptional tutor that goes straight to the point in explaining key accounting topics, and I mostly attended classes with two other students (with the rest opting for attending the classes online). We call ourselves the “Prata Buddies” as we sometimes had a pre-tuition dinner of Roti Prata before classes.
In the end, with much more support and the return of physical classes, I gained confidence in acing the examination and in the end, just like with SBL, I scored a 70-plus mark, despite the exam questions being tougher than what I expected.
The Movie
- Date of Screening: 7 December 2022 (Hours After the Exam)
- Cinema: Shaw Theatres Waterway Point
- IMDb score: 7.8/10
- Letterboxd score: 4.2/5
- Review link: Click here
I will be honest, I was planning to watch Puss in Boots: The Last Wish before the exam, but at least I watched it hours after the exam on the same day. Still, given this was a sequel to a well-beloved spin-off movie of the iconic Shrek franchise, I need to see it, especially when the first trailer had my jaw on the floor. Indeed, my jaw dropped once again after the screening.
However, it was not just the fact that I love that movie, but it also the fact that just like Puss in that movie, fearing that he may lose his last life and death is coming to get him, he went into a rather accurate depiction of a panic attack that I also encountered myself. This normally happens because I overthink over a few matters, which still happen to this day. This was also due to me second-guessing my choices and not wanting to make a fatal mistake.
Again, as the movie progresses, with the help of Kitty Softpaws and their new companion Pierio, Puss overcomes his fears and face off his adversaries head-on, rather than hiding in the shadows, which again was how I cope with the exam. In fact, despite the exam questions provided not normally what I was tested on, I concentrated on applying the relevant standards and face the questions head-on, just like what Puss did.
So yeah, I enjoyed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish considerably and I also recommended that movie because it resonates with certain people that had gone through similar experiences before.
Advanced Audit and Assurance: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (September 2023)
The Exam
- Date of Exam: 4 September 2023
- Pass rate: 34%
Of the four ACCA Strategic Professional exams I took, Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA), the first of my two options papers, is the most difficult of these exams for me. There is a reason AAA has the lowest average pass rate of all the ACCA exams, and it boils down to the following reasons:
- Poor time management (which is an issue across all exams) due to lack of proper planning of answers
- Poor application of relevant content in the response
- Poorly written answers that sometimes beat around the bush without answering the requirements directly
In fact, even for those with extensive experience in the audit field (such as me), it is notoriously difficult to pass unless you have proper exam technique and planning to tackle the following three difficult questions facing all candidates:
- Question 1: Audit Planning question, normally required to prepare a set of briefing papers to the Audit Partner on materiality to take, key audit risks, correct application of relevant accounting standards and ethical issues. 50 marks in total (of which 10 marks are professional marks)
- Question 2: Audit Completion question, which can test on a wide variety of questions centring around the completion phase of an audit engagement. This could range from reviewing the audit work done, reporting to Those Charged with Governance (i.e. Board of Directors of engagement client), reviewing the audit report and consideration of the correct audit opinion. 25 marks in total (of which 5 marks are professional marks)
- Question 3: Either an Other Assignments question which focus on non-audit engagements, such as due diligence reviews, or an Other Questions type that focus on other, more minor topics such as accepting an engagement, quality control reviews and more recently, group audits. 25 marks in total (of which 5 marks are professional marks)
For this exam, rather than going through with the same exam provider because they do not offer full tuition courses for the March and September sittings, I studied via an overseas tuition provider conducted by an excellent, more experienced tutor in Mr Ben Wilson (will leave a link to his YouTube channel and LinkedIn profile at the end). Just like with the tutors at LSBF, his course is comprehensive, with an abundance of learning materials and regular assignments with regular feedback.
Though his course was more intense, the quality of his course is top-notch and thanks to his course and me setting aside many hours to study extensively, which resulted in me passing the exam on my first attempt, which is very difficult since only one in three candidates pass that exam on average.
The Movie
- Date of screening: 31 August 2023 (4 days before the exam)
- Location of cinema: Shaw Theatres Jewel (Changi Airport)
- IMDb score: 7.2/10
- Letterboxd score: 3.8/5
- Review link: Click here
I grew up watching the early 2000s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series, and it was a series I absolutely love for both its action and comedy. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a movie that reminded me of my childhood as well as how much I am into nostalgia.
In a sense, this was created by TMNT fans for TMNT fans, filled with scruffy and creative animation that takes the TMNT concept to a whole new level, a refreshed TMNT storyline where this time, the Turtles are actual teenagers (voiced by teenagers who, despite a lack of experience, did an excellent job) who still maintain their respective traits despite the age change. The reimagined villains, especially Ice Cube’s Superfly, are a joy and Jackie Chan as Master Splinter was a nostalgic hit.
Admittedly, the movie fumbled a bit with some elements of the writing, but what Mutant Mayhem does is to not just make me nostalgic about my childhood, but it also reimagined a well-beloved franchise into something fresh and exciting that both newcomers and fanatics can enjoy too.
Going back to how it relates to both the exam and my profession, I appreciate we can turn something as old and traditional as auditing and modernising it with online software and automation tools that can increase the efficiency of the audit, and the same thing with accounting software for accounting too, which can be helpful for accounting professionals alike, whether to the profession or in the profession for years.
Advanced Taxation (Singapore Variant): The Boy and the Heron (December 2023)
The Exam
- Date of Exam: 6 December 2023
- Pass rate: 49%
Finally, my final Strategic Professional exam before I clear my exam requirement, and this is the only Strategic Professional paper with alternative variants. While the default variant for Advanced Taxation (ATX) is based on UK tax rules, candidates have the options to take on local variants, and for my case, there is a Singapore variant and considering that I seconded to my audit firm’s tax department for a few months to do tax compliance, I decided to make my gained tax knowledge to good use and take up the exam.
Just like with AAA, ATX has three questions:
- Question 1: Group question where the question tests not only on basic tax rules such as tax deductibility rules, Goods and Service Tax (GST) implications and withholding tax implications, but also on transfer of loss items between companies in a group, tax incentives for mergers and acquisitions, other relevant tax incentives and so on. Usually, the question needs to be answered in the form of a letter (although recent versions of this question require the answer to be in the form of an external memorandum). 50 marks in total (of which 10 marks are professional skills marks)
- Question 2: Personal tax question where the question requires candidates to prepare a tax computation for a person, including eligible tax incentives and personal tax reliefs the person is eligible to. Tax planning on using certain incentives to increase tax savings may also be required. 25 marks in total (of which 5 marks are professional skills marks)
- Question 3: Company taxation question, where once again, basic tax rules and regulations, including GST and withholding tax implications, are tested. 25 marks in total (of which 5 marks are professional skills marks)
The difficulty in this exam is not the tax content, which is straightforward to understand (with the exception of certain complex tax rules), it is the application of those tax rules that can be challenging. Just like in SBR, proper application and understanding of the tax rules are what is needed to pass the exams and, as always, time management is essential.
Just like with SBL and SBR, I took up tuition classes at the same tuition centre and, while I fumbled at first because I was studying this and the earlier AAA at the same time during the first quarter of my ATX tuition, once I completed the AAA exam, I focused fully on ATX and I was able to catch up significantly.
Despite failing my two assignment questions and barely passing the mock exam, I never game up and push through by practicing my questions and self-marking them to find my weak spots and improve on them, which was how I tackled the actual exam with confidence. In the end, I also scored a 70-plus mark and was the top student of the ATX Singapore variant exam for my session.
The Movie
- Date of screening: 5 December 2023 (1 day before the exam)
- Location of cinema: Shaw Theatres Jewel (Changi Airport)
- IMDb score: 7.6/10
- Letterboxd score: 4.0/5
- Review link: Click here
The Boy and the Heron is the latest animated movie from the legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, responsible for way too many iconic Studio Ghibli animated movies to count. Based on Miyazaki’s interpretation of “How Do You Live?”, haunted by the death of his mother during World War 2, Mahito moves to the countryside to live with his new step-mother and as he adapts to his new environment, he encounters a strange grey heron who may have the answers he was looking for through a new fantasy land.
Considering Spirited Away is one of my most favourite animated movies of all time, I had a feeling this movie would be something special, especially this was my first ever time I watched a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki movie in a theatre. Man, as expected, The Boy and the Heron hits hard, but it hits way deeper than I ever imagined.
In a sense, The Boy and the Heron felt like the last chapter of my ACCA journey, and it taught me that life must go on, so we must cherish and appreciate what we have. In a sense, that movie was an entire meditation session in appreciating life itself and that we might not be able to change our past, but we can change our future.
Overall, I appreciated the brutality in truth in The Boy and the Heron, and teaches me that I might have completed my ACCA journey as a student, but my ACCA journey as an affiliate on his way to becoming a member is only the beginning.
Conclusion (and Tips to Pass ACCA Exams)
This is one of the longest blog posts I had ever done, but I wanted to share my ACCA journey with a unique flair of animated movies that shaped me as I venture into my path to become an ACCA member.
Before I end off this post, here are some tips to tackle the ACCA exams, specifically the Strategic Professional Exams:
- Spend enough time preparing for the exams. Depending on learning style and speed, some would require more time to grasp their understanding, while others do not. Always plan and prepare well in advance to give yourself ample time to go through the content, whether you are self-studying or you are attending tuition class.
- Have proper exam technique and time management. More often than not, students fail because of either poor exam technique or they fail to plan their time properly, or sometimes both. Having good answering technique and time management gives more time to boost the quality of the answer.
- Practice, practice, practice. Different exams have a wide range of questions covering a wide range of topics, so focusing on breadth by practicing different questions testing on different topics is a must to pass the exam.
- If you fail, try, try again. Learning from mistakes early on helps to improve on exam answering technique and approach early on, so always refine your technique. If you fail (which is not uncommon for the Strategic Professional exams), reflect on where you can do better, refine your technique, and try again.
- Most importantly, ensure you have time to rest up. Sometimes, practicing questions all day can cause burnout and a dip in motivation to continue practicing for the exams. Always give some time to take a break, like spending time with your family or enjoy a personal activity to relax, such as watching animated movies like me.
I hope these tips can help you pass your next exam, whether it is ACCA or any other accounting exam and that my animated movie recommendations in this post are worth checking out if you have a chance.
Also, a shout-out to the tutors that guided me to pass my ACCA exams on my first attempt. Do note that I paid for the tuition and exam fees for all my 4 exams:
- SBL: Mr Dominic (London School of Business and Finance, or LSBF)
- SBR: Mr Sami (LSBF)
- AAA: Mr Ben Wilson (FME, LinkedIn and YouTube)
- ATX: Ms Yvonne (LSBF)
Well, that is all from me. It is time we return to our usual schedule of covering animated movies from all over the world and next up, we are heading back to New York City again, but this time, it seems we may be encountering a puppet and a soft toy going on their adventures in Central Park. Until next time, see you on the next adventure!
