The safest and fairest thing to do is to take the topic or issue and frame it more generally, describing the key features of the topic or explaining how to address the issue, instead of simply providing an answer. Two that have already been described are in the increased difficulty in maintaining comparability of difficulty and of passing grades from one CPA Exam to the next. Another implication is damage to the validity of the CPA Exam for making licensing decisions. If some candidates pass the CPA Exam only because they had the opportunity to learn the answers to specific questions that were likely to appear on the CPA Exam, the public safety and welfare protected by licensing might suffer. A fourth implication is the certain increase in costs to develop the CPA Exam.
Nondisclosed questions are valuable assets that are expensive for any testing program to replace.
Any serious breach would be costly to all candidates due to the need to write, pretest, and evaluate many new questions. Thus, widespread disclosure of Exam questions would add substantial costs to Exam development and result in fee increases to boards of accountancy and candidates. Think before you disclose CPA Exam questions, either with or without intent. A single incident of unauthorized disclosure of CPA Exam questions would have very serious consequences.