ACC ICF Credentialing Exam Prep

I found the exam challenging for 2 reasons:

• It requires focused attention for 3 hours. All 81 questions are scenarios, and you’ll have approx 2 min per question. I took almost the whole time on part 1, and had 10 minutes to check answers left in part 2.
• You have to pick the BEST and WORST answer in each scenario, and this can be tricky. Sometimes there’s more than one good (or bad) option, how do you determine which is better (or worse)?

With practice and prep, you can get a sense of what to consider when answering the questions.

I signed up for the exam 5 days ahead. Here’s how I prepped in 5-6 hours.

How to Prep

Step 1 (less than an hour) I read through the ICF Core Competencies (updated 2019), Code of Ethics (2020), and Core Values (2022).

Step 2 (less than an hour)

ICF provides only 8 questions that are representative of the exam (a little stingy, if you ask me!). However, the questions on the ICF website already mark the answers as Best or Worst, so you don’t get a chance to think them through for yourself. Here’s a copy of the questions without answers:

ICF ACC Accreditation Sample Questions without Answers

Note: the course I recommend in the next step also includes the 8 ICF sample questions, but testing myself up front was useful for identifying the gaps in my understanding.

Step 3 (1-2 hours including watching the ICF Ethics videos):

Take Lyssa DeHarts’s Exam Prep Course. I found the 5 free modules to be sufficient (you get CCE if you pay for the course). In particular:

• Lyssa’s 5 Keys (ACCAT) acronym is helpful.
• While watching the ICF Ethics videos, I also referred to ICF’s Insights and Considerations for Ethics.

The 5 Keys to the ICF Credentialing Exam Demystified

Step 4 (1-2 hours)