Ethics: duties before slogans
Ethics items fail when you treat the Code as a motto. A useful drill asks who you owe a duty to, whether you still have independent judgment, and whether a gift, referral, or side project creates a conflict you have not disclosed. CFA Drill writes original fact patterns for that judgment. They are not Institute item-set reprints.
How we write a stem
Start with a role (research analyst, PM, supervisor). Add one pressure (bonus, friend, travel, draft research). Then ask which action is most consistent with placing client and profession interests first. Distractors usually maximize firm revenue, hide behind “legal is enough,” or outsource judgment to a manual you never read.
Sample (original): A buy-side analyst is offered tickets worth several hundred dollars by a corporate IR contact the week before a rating change. The most consistent action is to refuse or disclose per firm policy before the research is published—not to treat hospitality as costless because “everyone does it.”
Independence is a process
Independent professional judgment is not a personality trait. It is whether you still can change the conclusion when the facts change. If investment banking, a large client, or your own account would make a downgrade painful, the item is usually about disclosure, recusal, or delaying the note—not about clever wording.
Records and communications
Recommendations need a reasonable basis you can reconstruct. Public comments need to be fair and not overclaim. If a stem offers a blog tip, a rumor, or a single chart with no workpapers, the Code-shaped answer is to do the work or stay silent, not to publish and “update later.”
Practice in the app
Free accounts get a fixed Ethics sample. Use the attempt-first method, then open reverse engineering for the duty that was actually tested. Full bank: cfa-drill.com.