CMA Part 2 is a four-hour exam with 100 multiple-choice questions and 2 essay questions, testing six areas under the outlines effective September 1, 2024: financial statement analysis (20%), corporate finance (20%), business decision analysis (25%), enterprise risk management (10%), capital investment decisions (10%), and professional ethics (15%). This guide explains the format, eligibility, and scheduling rules, then maps each tested area to its official learning outcomes so you know exactly what to prepare.
Exam format and the six tested areas
CMA Part 2 is a four-hour computer-based exam with 100 multiple-choice questions and 2 essay questions, drawn from six topic areas weighted under the outlines effective September 1, 2024.
The CMA is awarded by the Institute of Certified Management Accountants (ICMA), the certification body associated with IMA. Both exam parts are required for the credential, and Part 2 is Strategic Financial Management. The content you will be tested on comes from the Content Specification Outlines effective September 1, 2024, so any dated materials you buy should match that edition or newer.
Each part runs four hours: three hours for 100 multiple-choice questions and one hour for two essay questions. A small number of the multiple-choice questions are being validated for future use and will not count in your final score. Essay responses must include both written and quantitative answers, presented logically and responsive to the question asked.
Every Part 2 topic carries a Level C coverage designation, the deepest of the three levels the outlines define. Level C means requirements can draw on all six cognitive skills, from recalling definitions up to evaluating a chosen course of action. The six areas and their weights are shown below.
The outlines also assume you already know certain fundamentals: preparing financial statements, business economics, time value of money concepts, statistics, and probability. If any of these are rusty, refresh them before drilling Part 2 content, because the exam builds on them rather than reteaching them.
| Part 2 topic area | Exam weight |
|---|---|
| Financial Statement Analysis | 20% |
| Corporate Finance | 20% |
| Business Decision Analysis | 25% |
| Enterprise Risk Management | 10% |
| Capital Investment Decisions | 10% |
| Professional Ethics | 15% |
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: How to earn the CMA Certification | IMA; IMA CMA Content Specification Outlines effective September 2024 — Part 2 overview and examination information
Eligibility, timing rules, and keeping the credential
You need active IMA membership, a qualifying degree or related professional certification, two continuous years of relevant experience, and passes on both parts, with three- and seven-year clocks running from enrollment.
Four requirements define the credential. You must hold active IMA membership, complete a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university or hold a related professional certification, finish two continuous years of professional experience in management accounting or financial management, and pass both Parts 1 and 2 of the exam.
The timing rules matter for planning. After enrolling, you have three years to pass both exam parts and seven years to complete the education and experience requirements. The experience requirement may be completed before you sit the exams or within seven years of passing. You may take the two parts in any order, so Part 2 does not have to wait for Part 1.
Once certified, the commitment continues. You report 30 hours of continuing professional education annually, with at least two hours in ethics, and you keep your IMA membership active to retain the CMA designation.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: How to earn the CMA Certification | IMA
Scheduling your exam appointment
Choose one of three annual testing windows, register to receive an authorization number, then book with Prometric at least 72 hours in advance — ideally four weeks out.
The exams are computer-based and administered at Prometric test centers worldwide, with three testing windows each year: January/February, May/June, and September/October.
The booking sequence has four steps. Pick your testing window, register for the exam, receive your authorization number with further instructions, and then schedule your appointment with Prometric. To get your first choice of date, time, and location, schedule about four weeks ahead, and note that every appointment must be booked at least 72 hours before the exam date.
One rule deserves special care: once registered, you must sit the exam part during your assigned window. If you fail to schedule an appointment within that window, you pay another registration fee, and appointments cannot be moved to a later window. Choose your window realistically before you commit.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: How to earn the CMA Certification | IMA
Financial statement analysis (20%)
Prepare common-size and trend analysis, the five ratio families together with their limits, profitability analysis, and special issues such as foreign exchange effects and earnings quality.
Comparative analysis is the foundation. Practice preparing and analyzing common-size statements for the balance sheet and income statement, horizontal year-over-year comparisons against a base year, and growth rates for individual line items. The outcomes ask you to move beyond computing these to identifying patterns and trends that support business decisions.
Ratio work spans five families: liquidity, leverage, activity, profitability, and market ratios. You should calculate and interpret each one, including how a change in current assets, current liabilities, or unit sales moves a liquidity ratio. Just as important for Level C questions, know the limitations of ratio analysis and how to evaluate a company's strength using multiple ratios together rather than one at a time.
Profitability analysis covers why definitions of equity, assets, and return can be inconsistent when using ROA and ROE, revenue and cost-of-sales analysis, and sustainable equity growth. The special-issues area is easy to underprepare: the impact of exchange-rate changes on statements, inflation's effect on ratio reliability, adjusting for changes in accounting treatment, the distinction between book and market value and between accounting and economic profit, and the determinants of earnings quality.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: IMA CMA Learning Outcome Statements effective September 2024 — Part 2 – Strategic Financial Management, Sections A–F
Corporate finance (20%)
Cover risk and return with CAPM, instrument valuation and the cost of capital, raising capital, working capital management, restructuring, and international finance.
Start with financial risk and return: calculating rates of return, distinguishing systematic from unsystematic risk, understanding diversification and beta, and computing expected risk-adjusted returns with the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which prices expected return from the risk-free rate, beta, and the market premium.
Long-term financial management runs from the term structure of interest rates through valuing bonds, common stock, and preferred stock with discounted cash flow, duration as a bond's interest-rate sensitivity, and derivatives basics such as futures, options, and swaps. The cost of capital anchor is the weighted average cost of capital (WACC): determine it and its components, calculate the marginal cost of capital, and explain why marginal rather than historical cost matters for investment decisions.
Raising capital includes financial markets and the three forms of market efficiency, the role of credit rating agencies and investment banks, IPOs and secondary offerings, dividend policy, and share repurchases. Working capital management then covers cash, marketable securities, receivables, inventory, and short-term credit — including concepts such as economic order quantity, where the outcomes ask for understanding of how a variable change affects EOQ but not EOQ calculations.
A short worked example shows the style of calculation the working capital outcomes expect. Supplier terms of 2/10 net 40 mean a 2% discount if you pay on day 10, otherwise full payment on day 40. Skipping the discount keeps your money 30 extra days at a cost of $2 per $98 owed. Annualized on a simple basis, that is (2/98) × (365/30), or about 24.8%; compounded, roughly 28%. Because almost no short-term borrowing reliably costs that much, the calculation usually favors borrowing to take the discount — the point being that the nominal 2% figure is misleading until you annualize it.
Close the area with corporate restructuring — horizontal, vertical, and conglomerate mergers, leveraged buyouts, takeover defenses, and valuing a business combination with discounted cash flow — and international finance, where you calculate whether a currency appreciated or depreciated, evaluate hedging with futures, swaps, and options, and explain trade financing methods such as letters of credit, factoring, and forfaiting.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: IMA CMA Learning Outcome Statements effective September 2024 — Part 2 – Strategic Financial Management, Sections A–F
Business decision analysis (25%)
This is the heaviest-weighted area: cost/volume/profit and breakeven analysis, marginal analysis built on relevant costs, and pricing including target costing and elasticity.
Cost/volume/profit (CVP) analysis examines how total revenue, total costs, and operating income behave as output, prices, variable costs, or fixed costs change. Be able to calculate contribution margin per unit and in total, breakeven points in units and dollars for targeted operating or net income, and the margin of safety and its ratio. Multi-product questions ask how sales mix shifts operating income and why there is no unique breakeven point when several products share the mix, and you should understand how income taxes affect CVP results.
Marginal analysis rests on cost relevance. Incremental (differential) costs change between alternatives; sunk costs are already incurred and are never relevant; opportunity cost is the benefit given up by choosing one use of a resource over another. The classic decision types — accept or reject a special order, make or buy, sell or process further, add or drop a segment — all apply the same test of comparing each alternative's future differential cash impact. Qualitative factors such as product quality and supplier dependability belong in make-or-buy answers too.
Pricing completes the area: cost-based versus market-based approaches, target pricing and target costing with value engineering, price elasticity of demand using the midpoint formula, how elasticity lets you estimate total revenue after a price change, and how pricing decisions differ across a product's life cycle and across market structures from pure competition to monopoly. The exercise below works through the special-order decision type end to end.
Exercise: an original, self-contained practice item written for this guide, with all assumptions stated in the prompt.
Nova Company manufactures a component with annual capacity of 40,000 units; it currently produces and sells 34,000 units at a normal price of $46 each. At current volume, full cost per unit is $38: $29 of variable production cost and $9 of allocated fixed overhead. A one-time export buyer offers $33 per unit for 5,000 units, and the order would add $2 per unit in freight and documentation that Nova would not otherwise incur. Assume the order fits within idle capacity, will not become known to regular customers, and has no long-term implications. By how much would Nova's operating income change if it accepts, and what should it decide?
The worked answer and explanation follow each exercise — attempt it on paper before reading on.
Accepting raises operating income by $10,000, so Nova should accept the order. Incremental revenue is 5,000 × $33 = $165,000. Incremental costs are 5,000 × ($29 variable + $2 freight) = $155,000. The net effect is $165,000 − $155,000 = $10,000 of additional operating income.
The comparison counts only cash flows that differ between accepting and rejecting. The $9 per unit of allocated fixed overhead continues whether or not Nova accepts, so it is irrelevant, and per-unit full cost of $38 is therefore the wrong benchmark. Idle capacity means no regular sales are displaced, so no opportunity cost enters. The stated assumptions matter: if Nova were at full capacity, displaced contribution margin would become a real cost of the order, and if regular customers learned of the $33 price, the long-term revenue damage could outweigh the $10,000 gain. Those conditions are ruled out in the prompt, which is what makes the answer unique.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: IMA CMA Learning Outcome Statements effective September 2024 — Part 2 – Strategic Financial Management, Sections A–F
Capital investment decisions and enterprise risk (10% each)
Learn NPV, IRR, payback, discounted payback, and the profitability index plus their decision criteria, then the risk analysis tools and enterprise risk management concepts the outlines name.
The capital budgeting process section covers the stages of developing a capital budget, identifying relevant cash flows on a pretax and after-tax basis, how income taxes affect those flows, changes in net working capital, inflation's reflection in the analysis, hurdle rates, and real options such as the ability to abandon, delay, expand, or scale back a project (understood conceptually, with no calculations required).
For analysis methods, master the two discounted cash flow methods — net present value (NPV), which measures value added in dollars at the cost of capital, and internal rate of return (IRR), the rate where NPV equals zero — along with their decision criteria, assumptions, and known weaknesses. The outcomes specifically call out comparing them for independent versus mutually exclusive projects and the multiple IRR problem, plus payback, discounted payback, the profitability index, and sensitivity analysis.
A brief illustration shows where the methods conflict. Suppose two mutually exclusive projects share the same risk and a 10% cost of capital, each with conventional cash flows. Project A has an IRR of 25% and an NPV of $40,000; Project B has an IRR of 18% and an NPV of $95,000. Choosing A on rate alone is the mistake: NPV measures dollars of value, and B's larger scale wins at the common discount rate. Where rankings conflict, trace it to scale or cash flow timing before trusting IRR — and with conventional cash flows and a single well-defined rate, NPV is the defensible decider.
Enterprise risk management asks you to identify risk types including business, hazard, financial, operational, and strategic risk; calculate expected loss from a set of probabilities; and distinguish concepts such as unexpected and maximum possible loss, residual risk versus inherent risk, and capital adequacy. Know the risk response strategies — avoid, retain, reduce (mitigate), transfer (share), and exploit — and both qualitative tools (risk identification, ranking, and risk maps) and quantitative ones such as Value at Risk, where the outcomes require understanding but not calculations. The COSO Enterprise Risk Management—Integrated Framework is also listed.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: IMA CMA Learning Outcome Statements effective September 2024 — Part 2 – Strategic Financial Management, Sections A–F
Professional ethics (15%)
Learn the IMA Statement of Ethical Professional Practice's four principles and four standards, the fraud triangle, and the escalation sequence for resolving ethical conflicts.
The IMA Statement rests on four overarching principles — Honesty, Fairness, Objectivity, and Responsibility — enforced through four standards: Competence, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Credibility. In brief: Competence means maintaining expertise, following laws and technical standards, and providing accurate, timely decision support; Confidentiality means keeping information confidential except when disclosure is authorized or legally required and never using it for improper advantage; Integrity means mitigating conflicts of interest and avoiding conduct that discredits the profession; Credibility means communicating information fairly and objectively with all relevant disclosures.
The exam outcomes ask you to identify the principles and standards, evaluate a business situation for its ethical implications, name the standards violated, and recommend a course of action. The section also covers types of business fraud and the fraud triangle's three components as a model for identifying and managing fraud risk, plus organizational topics: ethical culture, leadership by example, whistleblowing frameworks, anti-bribery laws such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, sustainability and social responsibility, and data ethics. Note that the outlines state ethics may be tested in conjunction with any topic area.
For resolution questions, the IMA Statement lays out a sequence. Do not ignore the issue: follow your organization's established policies, including any anonymous reporting system. If no policies exist, a typical path is discussing the matter with your immediate supervisor, or with the next level of management if the supervisor appears involved. IMA offers an anonymous helpline for applying the Statement to a specific issue, and you may consult your own attorney about legal obligations and risks. If resolution efforts fail, disassociating from the organization remains an option of last resort.
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: IMA CMA Learning Outcome Statements effective September 2024 — Part 2 – Strategic Financial Management, Sections A–F; IMA Statement of Ethical Professional Practice — Principles, Standards I–IV, and Resolving Ethical Issues
Turning the outline into a study plan
Weight your time toward the 25% decision analysis area, practice integrated problems because subjects can be combined in questions, and anchor everything to the official downloads.
Business decision analysis carries the largest single weight at 25%, and the outlines state that topics within a part and the subject areas within a topic may be combined in individual questions. That combination rule is the strongest argument for practicing integrated problems — a capital budgeting question can pull in tax effects, working capital, and risk analysis — rather than drilling each formula in isolation.
As labeled advice rather than an official requirement: many candidates pair the two ratio-and-valuation topics together and the two incremental-cash-flow topics together, since financial statement analysis supplies inputs that corporate finance consumes and marginal analysis uses the same logic as capital budgeting at different horizons. Adjust the sequence to the weeks you actually have.
Use IMA's own materials as your backbone: the CMA Candidate Handbook for program requirements and procedures, the Content Specification Outlines for topic scope, the Learning Outcome Statements for the specific skills per topic, and IMA's practice quiz and test simulation to calibrate question style. The outlines also remind candidates that they are responsible for recent developments in the covered areas, including current pronouncements and business periodicals — worth a regular skim during your final weeks. Free practice questions and broader study guides are available to keep drilling after you finish this guide.
- Download the current Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements and check off each Part 2 outcome as you master it
- Read the CMA Candidate Handbook for scoring, procedures, and policies not covered in this guide
- Book a realistic testing window early, remembering the 72-hour booking minimum and the missed-window fee rule
- Reserve your final weeks for mixed-topic practice sets that mirror the outlines' habit of combining subject areas
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.: How to earn the CMA Certification | IMA; IMA CMA Content Specification Outlines effective September 2024 — Part 2 overview and examination information
Sources: IMA's certification pages and the official September 2024 Content Specification Outlines and Learning Outcome Statements.
Exam format, topic weights, testing windows, and eligibility verified against official IMA sources on September 18, 2026.: