It doesn’t often come up directly, but people sometimes hint at it – can you, should you cheat at exams, and if so how can you get away with it?

Well I have to say at the outset that I’m not a fan of cheating, because I think it’s…well, cheating. Like stealing or lying, I think it’s wrong. But you might well say, it’s all very well for someone who’s passed all the exams to say that – I’m not in the desperate position that you are.

OK, so let’s look at cheating. Cheating basically means doing something to give you an unfair advantage over others in the exam. Now you could argue that employing someone like me to coach you gives you an unfair advantage over those who try and do it by themselves. And in a sense that’s true – remember the scene from the film ‘Chariots of Fire’ where Sam Mussabini, the professional coach of 1924 Olympic champion Harold Abrahams had to hide away in a Paris hotel room whilst Abrahams won the gold medal? For many athletes of the time, having a professional coach was seen as cheating, nowadays it is normal practice.

Methods of cheating in professional exams vary from getting someone else to take the exam in your name; having cheat sheets up your sleeve or texting someone for the answer; through to copying the answers from your neighbour on the next desk. The exam boards are wise to all these moves  - for example, the RCP employs a statistical computer programme to look for similar patterns of answers from people sitting at adjacent desks. Getting caught cheating in a professional exam means possibly ruining your hard-won career, or at least making for a very embarrassing conversation with your boss.

So if you are going to cheat, whatever system you come up with needs to be:
1. Novel – so the examiners aren’t expecting it
2. Foolproof – so that you won’t get caught
3. Deniable – so that if you are caught, they can’t prove anything
4. Effective – make enough difference to your marks to be worthwhile

Now it may well be that you are ingenious enough, clever enough and determined, you may well be able to come up with a system which meets these criteria. However, if you really are that ingenious, clever and determined surely it makes more sense to use your talents to plan and execute a good exam preparation programme?

And to be honest, most people who think they are that clever just aren’t. That’s why people regularly get caught cheating. Cheating well is like being a good criminal – if you’re good enough to get away with the crime, you’re good enough to get what you want honestly. And if you’re not good enough to do the exam properly, you’ll probably not make a very good job of cheating either!