Learning objectives
By the end you can:
- State the six components of the CFA Institute Code of Ethics from memory, and explain, in operational terms (not slogans) what "place the integrity of the profession and client interests above your own" actually requires when a real conflict arises.
- State all seven broad Standards of Professional Conduct and their twenty-three lettered sub-standards, and explain the difference between conduct that is merely unwise and conduct that actually crosses a specific, citable line.
- Diagnose any vignette using a repeatable four-step method, identify the actor and the action, list the candidate Standards, isolate the single deciding fact the vignette planted, and state the CFA-defended verdict in one sentence, and run that method under time pressure.
- Apply Standard II(A), Material Nonpublic Information, correctly, including the mosaic-theory boundary that separates a legitimate synthesis of public data from a genuine MNPI violation, and explain why mere possession without acting is not itself a breach.
- Apply Standard I(C), Misrepresentation, to guaranteed-return language, spliced or blended track records, and uncredited use of others' work, and distinguish all three from properly labeled hypothetical or back-tested performance, which is permitted.
- Apply Standard III(C), Suitability, by testing a specific recommendation against a client's documented risk profile and constraints, and distinguish a merely aggressive recommendation from one that is affirmatively unsuitable.
- Tell apart the program's four "conflict-flavored" Standards (I(B) Independence and Objectivity, IV(B) Additional Compensation Arrangements, VI(A) Avoid or Disclose Conflicts, and VI(C) Referral Fees) and route a vignette to the one it is actually testing, not the one that merely sounds closest.
- Apply Standard V(C), Record Retention, including the CFA Institute's recommended minimum retention period and the governing rule when local law or firm policy requires longer.
- Distinguish Standard III(A), Loyalty, Prudence, and Care (owed to clients) from Standard IV(A), Loyalty (owed to your employer), two different duties that share a name and are the single most confused pair in the whole framework.
- Read a performance-presentation vignette and correctly cite Standard III(D) as the conduct rule being tested, while handing the underlying composite-construction mechanics to AA1.03 and the full GIPS standard to ES1.02, never re-deriving either.
- (Productivity objective: R10 duality.) Use an AI assistant to draft and drill additional practice vignettes fast, while treating every AI-generated Standard citation and verdict as a hypothesis to check against the Standards of Practice Handbook, never as the answer itself.
The duality, stated once (R10). The gated skill is items 1–10: naming the Standard, calling the violation, and proving it with the vignette's own fact, cold, under a clock. The productivity payoff is item 11, an assistant is a tireless vignette-writing partner. But hold this module's own warning in mind while you use one: an ethics vignette is engineered to make the tempting first-glance answer wrong, and a language model pattern-matches on surface features ("a gift was mentioned → must be Standard I(B)") exactly the way a rushed candidate does. This is one of the highest AI-over-trust-risk regions in the corpus for precisely that reason, the failure is not a fabricated number you can trace to a filing, but a plausible-sounding wrong citation that reads as confidently as a correct one. No tool earns you the gate; only the check does.