Examination integrity

The arrangement, stated plainly

A CBA examination is sat online, at a time you choose, without a proctor watching you and without identity documents being checked. We do not have invigilators, we do not use webcam monitoring, and we do not use lockdown browsers.

Every programme page says so before you enrol, in the words “online, unsupervised”, and CBA does not describe an examination as proctored when it is not.

What that arrangement buys, and who it is for

A proctored sitting means a test centre, a booking, a fee that roughly doubles, and travel. For a candidate in Amman, Riyadh or Karachi that can mean a different city. The unsupervised arrangement is what makes the credential reachable, and reachability is the whole point of an online certification body.

It also shapes what the credential can honestly claim. Read the tier table for employers: what an examination pass evidences is knowledge of a published syllabus, assessed under these conditions, and nothing more. Everything beyond that — applied competence, professional experience — is evidenced by the other components of the higher tiers, which is precisely why those tiers exist.

What stops the obvious abuses

• No two candidates see the same paper. Every sitting is assembled at random from the programme’s item bank to the published domain weightings, so a paper cannot be circulated and cannot be prepared for by memorising one.
• The timer runs on the server. It starts when the paper is served and it does not stop, pause or reset. Closing the browser does not stop it, and neither does losing your connection. An attempt that runs out is marked expired and the voucher is spent.
• One attempt per voucher. The voucher is consumed on submission whatever the outcome, and the transition is terminal in the database rather than enforced by the interface, so an attempt cannot be re-run.
• The answer key never reaches the browser. Marking happens on the server against a key the page has never held, which is why reading the source of an examination page yields nothing.
• Every question was reviewed by somebody other than its author before it could appear in a live paper, and every domain of every bank has been audited for answer cueing — the pattern where the right option is guessable from its shape rather than its content. That audit is run over the authored material before it is imported rather than by the examination system, and it reports domain by domain rather than bank-wide, because a whole-bank average conceals a bad batch.
• The full record of every sitting is kept for ten years, including the paper served and the answers given, so a pattern across sittings is visible rather than inferred. The candidate records policy governs that period and gives the reasons for it. The register entry is permanent; the sitting behind it is not.
• Every credential is publicly checkable and can be withdrawn. Where malpractice is established, the credential is revoked and the register entry stays, showing “Revoked”. An employer who checked it before can discover that it was withdrawn.

Sharing questions, sitting for somebody else, or having somebody sit for you is malpractice, and the malpractice policy sets out what happens: what is alleged, how you may respond, who decides, and how you appeal.

What this does not stop

An unsupervised examination cannot prevent a candidate consulting a book, a colleague or a chatbot during a sitting, and it cannot confirm that the person sitting it is the person named on the certificate.

What follows from that:

• The examination component of a CBA credential evidences knowledge of a published syllabus, assessed online and unsupervised. That is a real thing and a useful one, and it is not the same claim as a proctored examination makes.
• No CBA credential rests on that component alone. Every programme is awarded at Practitioner tier or above, and Practitioner adds assessed applied work — a model you build and submit, marked against a tolerance. Each of the four fields has a programme at Professional tier, which adds experience confirmed by a named referee who is answerable for what they said.
• The tier is printed on the certificate and shown on the register, so that an employer can see what each credential was assessed by.

What we intend to add, and what we will not

Identity verification at the point of sitting — a document check against the name that will appear on the certificate — is the next control we intend to introduce, because it closes the gap that matters most to an employer and costs a candidate very little. It is not in place today and this page will say when it is.

A proctored option, at a higher fee, for candidates and employers who want the stronger claim, is the step after that. It would be offered alongside the unsupervised route rather than replacing it, and the register would show which conditions a given credential was earned under.

We do not intend to introduce webcam monitoring of candidates in their own homes, or software that takes control of a candidate’s machine. Both are common and we think both are disproportionate: the first collects video of somebody’s home to protect a credential, and the second asks a candidate to hand over their computer to a certification body. If that position ever changes it will be argued here first.

Where this fits

The examination rules are what you agree to when you sit. This page is why they are what they are. The standard-setting policy covers how the pass mark is arrived at, and governance covers who is accountable and what CBA does not claim.