So we have arrived at my last reason for failure and I think it is sometimes the most difficult one to deal with. So difficult in fact, that over the next few columns I will be trying to address examples so that you can better understand this problem. Many people fail because they simply don't understand what Microsoft is looking for.

Have you ever been involved in a conversation (or argument) where you realize that the person you are talking to is just missing the point? Either they misunderstood you or they are stressing the less important details and getting stuck there. I think this happens a lot in life and I have seen it happen on exams. There is a reason why most questions have at least a few paragraphs of information before they ask you anything. The exam is trying to test your "real" understanding of the subject. One of the ways to do that is to throw extraneous details at you and see if you can tell what information is truly pertinent to the situation. There are lots of ways that Microsoft can accomplish this. One of the most dangerous ways that sometimes catches me is when they include an obscure reference to something that I really am not fully comfortable with. Imagine a question about writing .Net programs and they throw a comment about COM operations. If you are new programmer, you may have no idea what COM is since it is an older technique. You will wonder what it has to do with the question at hand and possibly waste time or even worse, get the question wrong.

How do I deal with this? One of the things that has served me well is taking as many Microsoft exams as I have. You start to get a feel for what questions you may see by just reading the course material. Another thing you can do, which isn't always the safest idea, is if there is something in that question that you have no idea what it is, ignore it and answer the question as if that wasn't even mentioned. I know that doesn't sound like a good idea but if you honestly prepared yourself (studied, practice tests, redo lab exercises) you probably would have come across the subject if it was relevant to the exam objectives. If you are seeing something that you have never heard of then to me, I would think it is a red herring trying to lead you astray.

Now if you haven't prepared thoroughly, that doesn't hold true. Then you will see lots of things that you have no idea about and I figure it is time for you to think about Microsoft's Second Shot program and doing better the next time.

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