When I sat for my CFE exams years ago, I was not looking for another paper to hang on my office wall. I was hunting for something much deeper: an unfair advantage.
You see, fraud is the invisible hand that quietly destroys organizations. It rarely screams. It rarely marches through the front door. It oozes through cracks, weak controls, lazy oversight, and naive trust.
Before I became a Certified Fraud Examiner, I thought catching fraud was about numbers. Balance sheets. Ledgers. Receipts.
After CFE training, I realized that fraud is about human behavior. It is about fear, greed, ego, and opportunity.
CFE rewired my brain, just like CPA had done.
I stopped asking: “Is this invoice legitimate?”
I started asking: “What would I do if I were the fraudster sitting in this chair?”
That shift made me dangerous. It made me indispensable.
1) What CFE really teaches you
a) Think like a criminal ethically
I stopped seeing employees as “good” or “bad.”
I saw systems. I saw gaps. I saw temptations. And I learned how to close them before they turned into scandals.
b) See patterns faster than others
While others saw random mistakes, I saw footprints. Patterns. Red flags are buried in normalcy. Why would someone who holds a senior role deliberately drive a run-down car? What could they be hiding? Why would someone earning a good salary, has been working for long, has stable bank balances, finance new investments with a bank loan? I started seeing everyone as a suspect until evidence showed otherwise.
I could connect a missing petty cash voucher in Lira to a ghost worker scandal in Gulu because I understood the psychology of concealment.
c) Navigate organizational politics
Fraud detection is never about facts alone. It is about courage. CFE gave me the frameworks to handle internal resistance, management pushback, and even CEO level coverups without losing my professional head.
2) The painful truth
Becoming a CFE will not make you rich.
It will make you valuable, but lonely.
You will become the person who sees problems before others even feel the tremors.
And trust me: people hate truth-tellers until disaster forces them to listen.
If you crave applause, easy promotions, or being “liked” then CFE is not for you.
If you want to become a necessary, respected, and feared guardian of organizational value, CFE is your path.
3) My lived experience
After I became a CFE:
- I was invited into closed-door boardrooms to brief directors on fraud risks they did not even know existed.
- I was flown across Uganda and East Africa to fix billion-shilling fraud messes.
- I consultancy commanded fees that made my old salary feel like pocket change.
- I was trusted to investigate cases involving ministers, CEOs, and parastatals because fraudsters fear competence more than they fear audits.
- I stepped on so many people’s toes, and the pressure on my life became unbearable.
- I founded the Institute of Forensics & ICT Security
But I also lost fake friends.
I faced threats, sabotage, and smear campaigns from people who preferred the old ways of sweeping things under the carpet.
I survived because CFE gave me not just knowledge, but a backbone.
If you are serious about building a career that matters, one that saves companies from collapse, protects public funds, and builds a legacy of trust, become a CFE.
But do it with eyes wide open.
Prepare for war, not a wedding.
Fraud is evolving.
The only question is: Are you evolving faster?
