Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examination
Signature Course No. 139 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examination course, in the Risk, Safety & Compliance category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
This is the course for accountants and bookkeepers — who keep or review the books in which schemes hide, and who are often the first people positioned to see a red flag and the last people equipped to know what to do with it — for managers and owners, for internal auditors and compliance staff, and for investigators, attorneys' staff, and loss-prevention professionals.
It works in the order a real examination works: first, Module 1 — Seeing the Fraud — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Examination Plan; then, Module 2 — Proving the Facts — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Report That Holds.
You finish by proving the whole course — in The Examination Plan and in The Report That Holds. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies, hands-free. In this course the Voice Coach is not an extra — explaining a finding to a board and defending a loss figure are spoken acts.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
The running case is worked end to end: one examiner, one company, and one documented loss that sums — rebuilt by you, scheme by scheme and year by year, until both routes arrive at the same figure.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete examination plan a board could sign, and the examination's closing package: the quantified loss schedule, the findings section, and the referral packet — written to be usable on the real job, not just filed in the course.
This is the one hundred and thirty-ninth course in The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the stance. An allegation is a claim someone made; a finding is a fact the evidence established; a verdict belongs to someone else. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Examination Plan for Module 1 and The Report That Holds for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Somewhere in most businesses, most years, nothing is wrong. The books are honest, the errors are ordinary, and the people are who they appear to be. Fraud examination exists for the other years — and for the harder truth that you cannot tell which year you are in by looking at the people.
This course teaches the discipline that answers suspicion with facts. You will learn the fraud triangle and the scheme families that recur across every industry — skimming, lapping, ghost employees, fictitious vendors, statement manipulation, kickbacks.
You will learn to read red flags in the books without mistaking a flag for a verdict, to decide whether an allegation has earned an investigation at all, and to plan one that protects evidence before it protects anyone's feelings.
You will learn chain of custody, data analysis for anomalies, transaction tracing, corroboration outside the books, and the interview sequence that ends — only at the end — with the subject.
And you will learn the two deliverables the whole discipline exists to produce: a loss figure that sums, documented dollar by documented dollar, and a report that states facts, findings, and limits so exactly that a court, a board, an insurer, or a prosecutor can act on it without the examiner ever having claimed more than the evidence holds.
What you will learn
- Distinguish allegation, finding, and verdict — and hold the examiner's stance under pressure
- Read the fraud triangle and the major scheme families, and name the control each scheme defeats
- Spot red flags in the books and weigh them without overclaiming what a flag proves
- Judge predication and plan an examination that protects evidence, people, and scope
- Preserve evidence under chain of custody so facts survive challenge
- Use data analysis, tracing, and outside corroboration to turn anomalies into documented facts
- Run an interview sequence that ends with the subject — and quantify loss so the figure sums
- Write the examination report and make the referral, remediation, and testimony handoffs
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examination, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Examination Plan and The Report That Holds
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the person holding the books when a question lands
Accountants and bookkeepers — who keep or review the books in which schemes hide, and who are often the first people positioned to see a red flag and the last people equipped to know what to do with it.
Managers and owners — who receive allegations, must decide whether they justify an examination, and must act on findings without converting suspicion into accusation a step before the facts allow.
Internal auditors and compliance staff — whose work borders the examiner's, and who need the boundary drawn plainly: audit samples for assurance; examination follows predication to facts.
Investigators, attorneys' staff, and loss-prevention professionals — who handle evidence, interviews, and referrals, and who need the accounting side of the work stated in the language the rest of the case will use.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Examination Plan
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
More Signature Courses are coming
Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examination is Signature Course No. 139. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.