Is the CPA Worth It? 5 Reasons You Should Earn Your CPA & CMA

One of the first career decisions accounting students and professionals make is whether to pursue their CPA (Certified Public Accountant) license or CMA (Certified Management Accountant) designation—but who said you have to choose one or the other? Particularly for CPAs, dual certification can be immensely rewarding.

A 2023 Strategic Finance article titled Dual CMA and CPA Certification: A Winning Combination provides a nine-step plan for accounting students to pass both the CPA and CMA exams soon after graduation.

The takeaway in the article is clear: earning both your CPA and CMA is a great way to immediately set yourself apart in the competitive fields of accounting and finance.

Even if you are certain you want to be a CPA and are happy in your current position, adding the CMA certification to your credentials will visibly place you ahead of the curve among your CPA colleagues.

If you are a student and have the opportunity to go for both simultaneously using the Dual CMA and CPA Certification approach as a blueprint, even better. The authors of the article have boiled down their approach to nine steps while you’re still in school to pass both the CMA and CPA exams in as few as nine months after graduation. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Double yes.

In any career, you get out of it what you put into it. Stronger credentials naturally command higher salaries, and CPAs who invest in the CMA certification can see a significant return on their efforts.

The IMA Global Salary Survey cites that professionals who hold both certifications earn 47 percent more than their non-credentialed peers, and the pay gap increases to 58 percent for professionals ages 30-39.

Additionally, the 2023 IMA Global Salary Survey stated that CMA holders earn 21 percent more than non-CMAs in median annual compensation alone. These statistics all reflect ongoing ROI (aka salary) potentially adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to your income over the course of your career.

It is also widely believed that a CMA certification can serve as a more cost-effective alternative to an MBA, as many of the general business concepts and financial skills overlap.

The more you know, the better you can serve clients. And the better you can serve clients, the more valuable you are to an employer.

Expanding your knowledge base from compliance and regulation into management accounting will help you understand the big picture that is corporate finance. This includes planning, control, analysis, ethics, and decision support.

“Earning both the CMA (Certified Management Accountant) and CPA (Certified Public Accountant) designations is a huge differentiator for accounting students in today’s competitive and dynamic business environment,” Hargadon and Fuller wrote.

“Dual certification signifies that holders have a broad and deep range of knowledge, skills, and expertise in accounting and finance beyond auditing, tax, and financial reporting. It also shows prospective employers that the holder is highly motivated, ambitious, and seriously committed to lifelong continuing professional education.”

While CPAs spend much of their time preparing documentation, CMAs focus on dissecting financial data and using it to drive organizational success.

Even if you don’t necessarily intend to cross that bridge, knowing what’s on the other side can add an extra dimension to the decisions you make for your career, the advice you give to clients, and the communication you have with peers.

For CPAs who are motivated by professional growth and leadership opportunities, the CMA certification is an avenue to the C-Suite. While many CPAs do become CFOs, it is the CMA who has the initial edge at face value.

After all, the CMA does have the word “management” in its credential. That said, the CPA who adds CMA to their resume perhaps regains the advantage due to the foundational training that CPAs receive.

One of the most rewarding aspects of becoming a leader in this industry is the transition from producing to overseeing. The former can begin to feel stagnant and repetitive, while the latter is fast-paced and proactive.

By strategically scheduling and sequencing your studies to align with the topics tested, you can prepare for both exams more efficiently and benefit from the content overlap between the CPA and CMA exams.

The table below illustrates the alignment in content areas between the CPA and CMA exams.