Somebody wrote the questions on the exam that credentialed you, and it was not the testing company. Amazon Web Services says plainly that nobody on its certification team writes the exam questions or even decides what to ask. Practitioners volunteer their time to do it.
It works that way nearly everywhere. The item writers for the leading financial advising credentials are volunteers with specialized expertise in the field, according to the Investments and Wealth Institute. Certification exams for water and wastewater operators are built by a volunteer committee of experienced operators working alongside testing specialists. One clinical specialty credential runs 40 to 50 volunteers through the review stages before a single question ever counts.
Here is why people keep saying yes. Your employer sees your work. Your industry does not. A performance review happens behind a closed door, and the people who might one day hire you, refer you, or recommend you are not in the room. A committee is the one setting where peers from other companies watch you reason through a problem, hold a position, and finish what you said you would finish.
The cost is smaller than it sounds, generally a few evenings and a handful of days a year. And the return is not only the line on a resume. People who sit on certification and standards committees learn what is changing in their field months before the rest of the field hears about it, which is worth something back at the office.
Ask whoever certified you what committees they staff. Somebody has to write next year's questions.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
