The CQA test is the Certified Quality Auditor examination, a professional certification exam administered by the American Society for Quality (ASQ). It’s designed for professionals who evaluate quality systems and processes to ensure organizations comply with standards and regulations. Passing the exam earns you the CQA credential, signaling that you have the knowledge to plan, perform, and manage quality audits.
What the CQA Credential Means
A Certified Quality Auditor specializes in identifying areas for improvement within an organization’s quality systems. This could mean auditing a manufacturing process against ISO standards, evaluating a supplier’s compliance with contractual requirements, or assessing whether a company’s internal procedures actually work the way they’re documented. The credential is recognized across industries where quality management matters: manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, food production, and government contracting, among others.
The CQA isn’t an entry-level certification. It signals that the holder has both significant work experience and tested competence in auditing principles, quality tools, and professional ethics.
Eligibility Requirements
To sit for the CQA exam, you need eight years of on-the-job experience in areas covered by the exam’s body of knowledge. At least three of those years must be in a decision-making position, meaning you had authority to define, execute, or control projects or processes and were responsible for the outcomes. All experience must come from full-time, paid roles.
A college degree can reduce the eight-year requirement. A bachelor’s degree waives four years, a master’s or doctorate waives five, an associate degree waives two, and a technical or trade school diploma waives one. Only one educational waiver can be applied. So with a bachelor’s degree, you’d still need four years of qualifying work experience, with three of those in a decision-making capacity.
Exam Format and Timing
The CQA is a multiple-choice exam offered in English only, delivered either by computer or on paper. The computer-delivered version contains 165 questions, though only 150 are scored. The remaining 15 are unscored questions being evaluated for future exams. You get 5 hours and 18 minutes of exam time, with a total appointment window of five and a half hours. The paper version has 150 scored questions and a five-hour time limit.
The exam is open-book. You can bring reference materials, and ASQ’s own CQA Handbook is specifically designed to be used during the test. Exams are delivered through Prometric testing centers, with an online remote-proctored option also available.
What the Exam Covers
The CQA body of knowledge spans five major areas:
- Auditing fundamentals: Types of quality audits, their purpose and scope, criteria to audit against, the roles of audit participants, and professional conduct expectations for auditors.
- The audit process: Preparation and planning, performing the audit on-site, writing the audit report, and follow-up through closure.
- Auditor competencies: Communication and presentation techniques, interviewing skills, conflict resolution, managing on-site resources, and understanding team dynamics.
- Audit program management: Running an audit program at the organizational level, plus understanding the business and financial impact of audit findings.
- Quality tools and techniques: Problem-solving tools, process improvement methods, basic statistics, sampling methods, risk management, change control, and verification and validation techniques.
The exam tests practical knowledge, not just memorized theory. You’ll encounter scenario-based questions that require you to apply auditing principles to realistic situations.
Scoring and Results
You need a scaled score of 550 out of 750 to pass. The exam uses criteria-based scoring, meaning your result is measured against a fixed standard of competence rather than compared to other test-takers. A score above 550 means you demonstrated competence; the exam isn’t designed to rank how well you performed beyond that threshold. This scoring approach follows standards developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education.
Costs
The initial exam fee is $550 for non-members. ASQ members save $100, bringing the cost to $450. If you need to retake the exam, the fee drops to $350. These costs cover only the exam itself. Preparation courses, study materials, and ASQ membership are separate expenses.
How to Prepare
ASQ publishes an official list of reference materials that form the basis for exam questions. The two most directly useful resources are the CQA Handbook (the companion guide to the body of knowledge, which you can bring into the exam) and the CQA Question Bank, which contains sample questions in the same format you’ll see on test day.
ASQ also offers certification preparation courses in multiple formats: classroom, virtual, and self-paced online. A new version of the self-paced course is available for exams scheduled from April 2026 onward, so check which version aligns with your testing window.
Maintaining Your Certification
Passing the exam isn’t the last step. ASQ requires recertification every three years to confirm you’re keeping your knowledge current. You need to earn 18 recertification units (RUs) during each three-year cycle. RUs come from professional development activities like attending training, publishing articles, or participating in quality-related work. If you don’t accumulate the required units, you can retake the certification exam instead to maintain your credential.