Is it hard to become a CPA?

Get my CPA to become a financial analyst/further career?

• I'm looking to become a financial analyst (corporate, not investment, my town is too small for investment analysts) and eventually a senior analyst and maybe controller or cfo down the road. I'm about to finish my MBA in finance and a friend currently holding a job as a financial analyst said he's working toward a CPA. I don't have that many accounting classes under my belt (2 to be exact). I am thinking of taking night classes to get my master's in accounting so I can sit for my cpa. Any advice on this plan? Fwiw, the job market here is tough and competitive, so an MBA with no accounting background isn't getting me much notice. Plus my friend makes it sound like a cpa is really a big plus in the long run in the field, so I thought I might as well go ahead and work toward it now.

• Answer:

  This will help down the road if you want to be on a CFO track. Unlikely to really matter that much at junior levels. You'd want to be careful against being slotted into a line accounting role too if you had a CPA; better to chase a managerial/MBA track and have the CPA be a bonus about you rather than the thing you lead with.