Let’s say you’ve been working in Treasury for a couple of years.  If you’re in a small to mid size company, chances are pretty good that you’ve had a little bit of everything land on your desk.  In a large company, you may have been more specialized in Cap Ex, or Budgeting, or any one of several other areas.  Every company is arranged differently, so it’s not really important.  What is important is that the credential is intended to give you a grounding in all the different aspects of Treasury as it is today.  This is important because, regardless of your experience, there are going to be topics and subjects that are unfamiliar, or less familiar, to you.  As you’re studying the BOK, make special note of those topics or subjects.

When you get closer to exam time, you’ll want to pull out that list of topics and subjects and re-visit them, precisely because they are unfamiliar to you.  It is entirely possible that you can use logic and reasoning to figure out the answer to a question related to a topic or subject that is familiar to you.  With a question on a topic or subject that is unfamiliar, sometimes the best you can do is go

“Huh?”

My suggestion is to take time, after you’ve gone through the BOK but before the exam, and go back over the unfamiliar parts in a deeper dive to increase your understanding to the greatest degree you can.  Obviously, you won’t know it as well as a 20 year veteran, but you should be able to grasp the principles and theories presented in the text.  That’s the starting point for all of us.

- Fred Butterfield, CTP