Exam guide: Sustainability and Ethics

At a glance

Sitting: on demand
Duration: 1.5 hours
Format: 50 multiple-choice, multi-part multiple-choice or multiple-response questions
Pass mark: 55%

Syllabus weighting:

• Concepts and significance of sustainability (10%)
• Pillars of sustainability (10%)
• Regulation on sustainability (6%)
• Sustainability in business (14%)
• The role of the professional accountant in sustainability (10%)
• Concept of ethics and its significance for the accountancy profession (8%)
• Ethics and public trust (14%)
• The fundamental ethical principles (14%)
• Threats and safeguards (6%)
• Data ethics and the impact of technology (8%)

Need to know

It is important that chartered accountants act ethically and support organisations in being sustainable. Ethics has always been fundamental to the profession. Along with the third key theme of technology, both sustainability and ethics will be embedded throughout your learning as you progress through the Professional and Advanced Levels.

This exam introduces the core knowledge that you will develop over the course of the qualification and apply in your professional life. The syllabus is divided into two halves, with five smaller areas within each. Both sections start with the big view – ethics as a philosophical concept, or what climate change is, for example – before drilling down into how they apply to organisations and individuals, covering key aspects such as sustainability regulation and reporting, and the ICAEW Code of Ethics. Each of the 10 syllabus areas (see above) will be assessed within the exam, across 50 scenario- and knowledge-based questions each worth two marks.

How to approach it

The learning materials for Sustainability and Ethics assume no prior accounting knowledge, so this exam can be sat at any time – and, given that there’s nothing more fundamental to a ICAEW Chartered Accountant than ethics, it makes sense to tackle it early. There are some areas of the syllabus that students tend to find more challenging: within ethics, the concepts of the public interest and forms of bias can be harder to grasp, while the areas that are affected by technology can be tricky because things move so quickly. Within sustainability, there are lots of regulations and reporting frameworks to get to grips with and, again, it can all feel like a bit of a moving target. 

The most important thing with this exam is to stay focused. Because things change so rapidly, particularly within the worlds of sustainability and technology, it’s easy to get confused or distracted. Stick to what you’re going to be tested on. The learning materials are your fixed point; use the workbook and the question bank, and don’t worry too much about things shifting around outside them. Make sure you do plenty of question practice. There are mock exams, and these are very important – not only to practise answering a full set of 50 questions to time, but also because they’re in an order that reflects the real exam, rather than dealing with one topic at a time as you will with the workbook and question bank.

This is a purely words-based exam, so success lies in reading the scenarios in the questions very carefully, and paying close attention to what the requirement is asking you to do. It’s good practice to think about what the answer might be before you look at the options. You can flag any questions you’re really not sure about and come back to them at the end if you have time.

Read more about Sustainability and Ethics in the ACA Syllabus Handbook.