How I Passed the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt Exam

The ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt examination is a rigorous and difficult exam. It requires disciplined study, experience, and a sound preparation and test-taking strategy. Many people study for months and still fail. I didn’t want to be one of them. Here’s How I Passed the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt Exam.

Note 1: This was a much longer article than I expected! Thanks for all of the great feedback!! I aim to make this the most comprehensive guide on passing the exam. Along the way, I’ve included many topics that may be broader than what you seek.

Note 2: If you want to pass the Villanova Six Sigma Black Belt exam or something similar to that format, I have specific notes on how I passed that exam the first time. See this article detailing my approach to passing the Villanova Six Sigma Black Belt exam here.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, as applying all of the lessons covered below will lead to a much more successful and fulfilling career experience than simply passing the test.

How I Passed the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt Exam: Overview

Here’s an outline of what’s covered. As always, I’d love your feedback in the comments section at the end of this post.

1. Define What You Want out of the Experience
2. Consider Obtaining a Green Belt Certification First
3. Get a Good Foundation in the ASQ Six Sigma Body of Knowledge
4. Increase your General Six Sigma Knowledge
5. Get Practical, Hands-on Six Sigma Knowledge
6. Set a Deadline & Commit
7. Baseline Your Knowledge
8. Analyze Your Weaknesses and Decide How to Turn Them Into Strengths
9. Improve Your Weaknesses
10. Test Taking Logistics
11. Conclusion: Make the Material Your Own

1) Define What you Want out of the Experience.

The ASQ exam is difficult. You’ll want to quit. Preparation is rigorous, and your attention may be spinning off to several other things. Or you’ll procrastinate and put off studying until the week before the exam.

The way to combat this is to define what you want to accomplish from the experience.

This will take a lot of hard work. The work gets easier if you clearly know why you want to get your certification. When studying gets difficult – and it will – be sure you can focus on that ‘why clearly.’

Hamid Anjum sums it up nicely;

“Signing up for the six sigma black belt exam is a major step in your professional career. The decision to take the exam needs to be thought over, planned, discussed, and reviewed thoroughly since most of the applicants are on full time jobs and have been out of their student lives for quite some time. Getting back to the books while on the job requires planning and a strong motivation. Moreover, if the exam is a requirement of your company, the stakes are higher since your career progress will be impacted by your performance. Intimidating? Indeed !! and these vital factors are in one form or the other your strongest motivators.”

Another factor worth considering is if the ASQ certification is right for you. This certification is widely held as the most rigorous and demanding. Remember, not only do you need to pass a difficult exam, you need to have completed real-life project work!

Only you know if following this path is right for you. Obviously, I found the effort to be worth the prize. Nichole Radziwill summed up the benefits nicely on her blog:

The ASQ option is probably the quickest and cheapest if you’re good at self study, and dedicated to the task of Six Sigma problem solving. However, with the ASQ certification you also get a lot of clout. I don’t think any other organization has more than 10,000 Black Belts supporting the program, working on updates to the new exams, and keeping the curriculum current. I just personally think it’s a much more viable Black Belt designation than the other programs.

2) Consider Obtaining a Green Belt Certification First

Obtaining the ASQ (or similar) Green Belt certification could be considered ‘Table Stakes’ for even considering becoming a black belt. I personally took a Green Belt certification through my local community college years ago. That course gave me an excellent foundation for my career and future black belt certifications.

Since ASQ does not require that you become Greenbelt certified, I don’t think it matters too much where you go. There are several companies that provide the training and certification, like Villanova, ASQ, MoreSteam, and others. As I said, my community college was a great avenue to have classroom instruction, access to a professional to ask questions to and build my foundational knowledge.

Again, this is not mandatory. But it is helpful, and you must master those concepts anyway.

3) Get a Good Foundation in the ASQ Six Sigma Body of Knowledge

ASQ tells you exactly what will be on the exam. Review the ASQ Black belt body of knowledge. Be sure that you understand each concept well.

You’ll notice that most of the topics are listed as conversational pieces. If you cannot imagine having a productive conversation about these topics with another smart person, I suggest you work to fix that gap. A good way to do this is to step through each link I have on the body of knowledge and imagine yourself teaching that topic.

Formal Education Options

While passing a certification test without formal Six Sigma training is possible, I wouldn’t recommend it. I took the Villanova course (because my company paid for it) and enjoyed much of it. That course preps you for their exam (see my notes on how I passed that). Villanova only gets you to about halfway to the more rigorous ASQ.

I’ve heard colleagues say good things about MoreSteam’s classes but have not taken them myself.

YouTube, Coursera, and Khan Academy are good options for spot-learning material.

Learn By Teaching

One of the best ways to gain mastery of a topic that you have learned the material academically is actually to volunteer to teach that topic. There are a number of ways to do this, but here are a few:

• Write or expand an article here on SixSigmaStudyGuide.com – There are hundreds of items in the Body of Knowledge. I’d love to get your perspective on any of the topics. Just use the contact form to get in touch with me.
• Make a PowerPoint presentation and upload it to one of the sharing sites like LinkedIn and get feedback.
• Join up with a professional organization – like ASQ – and look for volunteer opportunities.
• Set up a lunch-and-learn session at your place of employment. Get a room and find a few coworkers who could
• If you want to improve your public speaking skills, there’s no better forum than Toastmasters. Toastmasters uses a requirements-based advancement system so you can fulfill speaking requirements by giving short presentations.

I am a big fan of learning by teaching others, which is why I started this site. This approach has given me countless benefits, but don’t take my word for it alone; Wikipedia has a great hub page with links to supporting data. If you’d like to learn more, check out this page – especially the LDL section.

4) Increase your General Six Sigma Knowledge

Feedback from those who have taken the test often includes anger at ASQ for including topics not specified in the Body of Knowledge. However, they do specifically state that you need to have more than what is listed there:

The subtext is not intended to limit the subject matter or be all-inclusive of what might be covered in an exam. It is meant to clarify the type of content to be included in the exam.

They go on to cite many references you could use and should have familiarity with:

• Statistical Methods for Engineers and Scientists
• The Memory Jogger II
• Implementing Six Sigma: Smarter Solutions Using Statistical Methods
• Integrated Enterprise Excellence: Improvement Project Execution: A Management and Black Belt Guide for Going Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard.
• Benchmarking: The Search for Industry Best Practices That Lead to Superior Performance
• The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are Honing Their Performance
• Practical Nonparametric Statistics
• Tolerance Design: A Handbook for Developing Optimal Specifications
• Introduction to Statistics and Probability
• Six Sigma Team Dynamics: The Elusive Key to Project Success
• Lean Six Sigma for Service: How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions
• The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to Nearly 100 Tools for Improving Quality, Speed, and Complexity 
• Nonparametric Methods for Quantitative Analysis 
• Statistical Quality Control
• The Visual Factory: Building Participation Through Shared Information
• Juran’s Quality Planning and Analysis for Enterprise Quality
• Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations
• Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success
  
• Applied Multivariate Statistical Analysis
• The Lean Company: Making the Right Choices
• Juran’s Quality Handbook
• The Certified Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook
• Six Sigma Project Management:A Pocket Guide
• Design & Analysis of Experiments, 7th ed
• Six Sigma for The Shop Floor A Pocket Guide
• Customer Centered Six Sigma: Linking Customers, Process Improvement, and Financial Results
• Competitive Manufacturing Management: Continuous Improvement
• Quality Engineering Using Robust Design
• The Six Sigma Handbook
• Quality Engineering Handbook
• Six Sigma Pocket Guide
• The Team Handbook
• A Revolution in Manufacturing: The SMED System
• A Quick Changeover for Operators: The SMED System
• Statistical Methods
• TPM: Total Productive Maintenance
• Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation 
• Design for Six Sigma for Service 

In my mind, this is a ridiculously long list to prepare for an exam. Don’t get me wrong; if you intend to be a professional Six Sigma Black Belt, these are all materials you should be familiar with. I get the impression that ASQ wanted to convey that their exam is no joke, that you have to really understand this material, and that they reserve the right to test you on anything in the field.

Point taken.

In my opinion, that’s part of your own professional library that could be curated over a career.

The Books I Used

This is a small list that I recommend my colleagues use to prepare for the exam. It’s very helpful to see how these concepts were played out in real life. It’s said that you can become an expert in anything if you truly understand five books on your subject. For less than $100 US, you could buy your own copies of these favorites and then easily stand out in any Six Sigma interview:

My Favorite Six Sigma Books for Contextual Knowledge

• Straight from the Gut – This book started Six Sigma adoption at my company. I recognized that all of the executives at my company were reading it the month it came out and immediately got a copy. It serves as an autobiography for GE’s Jack Welsh but illustrates how and why he deployed Six Sigma at the enterprise level.
• Porter’s Five Forces – This is the seminal book on business strategy. Perhaps reading and applying this material is more important than even taking the Six Sigma certification.
• The Lean Start-Up – We are living in the start-up generation. Eric Reis applies traditional Six Sigma tools to ensure the success of a business start-up. This is especially important to anyone who has been told that Six Sigma does not apply to software development.
• Best Value: Six Sigma for Small Business – You can get this one for free in PDF format here! Informal and engaging, by casting Six Sigma as something applicable to small businesses, you understand Six Sigma DMAIC methodology through the perspective of actionable techniques anyone can use.
• Optional: The GE Way – I debated putting this one here. In short, this is a good book but redundant – both to some of the other material on this list and also to itself. Ultimately, I left it on because I found reading very helpful while traveling. You get great excerpts and quotes, and the redundancy is helpful if you’re consuming it on the go and have a lot of interruptions and context-switching going on.

Now, gaining contextual knowledge is different from actually studying. Once you have a good knowledge base, I would consider the following resources to help you prepare and do well on the exam.

My Favorite Study Materials

You can review these as well as bring them to the test.

• You can print my notes from any page on this website.
• Indiana Council Primer and Question Bank
  • There are 400 sample questions included in the primer, which is very useful.
  • The book also contains a CD containing sample exam questions and simulated exams.
• What others have used:
  • The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook: A Quick Reference Guide to 100 Tools for Improving Quality and Speed
  • The Cartoon Guide to Statistics
    • Not a joke, this is awesome.
  • The Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt
    • This book is the ASQ handbook, which basically contains the bare minimum explanation of every section of the body of knowledge. You will find that the text is a lot less than in the primer, and this book is very “to the point.”
    • After reading the primer, I used this book and found out that although all topics of the body of knowledge are covered, the topics are not explained in great detail. However, there are many example questions in this book within the chapters as well, which will help you to attempt the questions that will appear in the exam.
    • I recommend studying this book as well since it is the official ASQ handbook and relates to many exam questions. Even if you cannot read all of it, skim through it and review the example questions in the chapters. They definitely help during the exam.
  • The Teaching Company videos.
  • Six Sigma and Minitab by QSB consulting (yes…get even if you aren’t using Minitab). Bring both to the exam. You’ll have to remove practice problems from the Indiana book. Very important…know where things are in both books…this will be critical. And as we LSS types should know…focus on getting 80% done first…then go back for other questions…don’t waste time on questions that take more than 2 min!
  • Khan Academy – free courses. Tons of material.

Case Studies

As I said, I like having strong context on how to apply academic subjects to real-world problems. Harvard Business Review offers tons of case studies. You can also search Google News.

Reminder: I have published many real-world case study articles here.

Join ASQ

Being helpful to others

Solving pressing problems

Learning new skills or about new companies/divisions / processes.

Making an impact in your current role.

Amount of training – did you pass a Green Belt? Did you take a formal Six Sigma training class?

Contextual knowledge – have you been keeping up with the industry? Have you read supplemental books?

Projects worked – have you completed your project yet?

Work demands – Working 80 hours a week and studying is much different than working 40 hours a week and studying. Also, if your work requires a lot of travel or similar overhead, your ability to have dedicated focus will be limited.

Family / personal demands – Everyone has responsibilities outside of work. You must take these into account when planning your study time.

The Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt

 EBay has a bunch for sale – I have not tried it. Something about buying goods for 5% of what everyone else is charging makes me think of poor quality or piracy.

People on various Linked In Groups tend to share a lot of questions. I am unsure how legal that is so I avoided it. Perhaps you can ask them about copyrights.

There are roughly (10) categories in the ASQ exam.

There are 150 multiple-choice questions.

There are 4 hours in the test.

This means 1 minute 33 seconds per question.

We don’t know the cutoff for a passing grade (because the ASQ does some crazy normalizing stats), so we have to aim for >90% of the material to be well understood.

Accuracy of your answers

Speed of completing questions.

Endurance: Actually completing all of the questions in the allotted time.

Lots of practice on lots of different problem types.

A true understanding of the material.

Be very familiar with your reference material.

Every second counts. Don’t waste your time fumbling around.

Know the Primer and know how to navigate it well.

Have a system for marking questions to return to.

Prevention of Stress:

Your best course of action is to have adequate preparation with planned study months and weeks ahead of time.

Week before

Double-check enrollment & location

Secure travel arrangements

Night Before

Eat well.

Get a good night’s sleep.

Day Of Exam

Eat a good breakfast.

Bring the right materials.

Getting to the exam room early.

Bring any medication you may need

I brought two bottles of water and two Coke Zeros – a tradition I have had since my freshman year of college.

The Calculator:

Have the right calculator allowed – Remember you are not allowed to take your cell phone, iPad, or any device with access to the internet in the exam room.

Lots of experience practicing with it – don’t use an unfamiliar calculator on the test!

Knowing the calculator’s functions.

Bring extra batteries – I brought two calculators – just in case!

Reference Materials:

A good reference book that you know how to use – I brought the Indiana Council Book with the practice exam questions removed.

Your own personal notes – I wrote these in the margins of my reference book.

I printed out a few select pages from this website

Nichole has a great list of what she brought here.

Extra blank note pages to do calculations on – I am a visual learner, so having some 50 blank pages of printer paper helped me understand each problem and sketch to better attack it.

You will have to remove any sample questions from any of your materials. The Primer makes this easy because it is a binder with all the questions on blue pages.

I took good notes, put them on this website, and printed the pages. You are welcome to do the same.

I did not take any additional books, but textbooks are allowed. To me, this was a time and space constraint. Remember that you are on the clock, so you want to be able to access information as quickly as possible.

No pages of your books may have example problems or multiple choice problems.

A good, ‘dumb’ calculator.

No device with an internet connection – this is an open book, not an open web test!

The only exception is you cannot carry books with Multiple-choice questions.

Customized study sheets – again, I printed pages from this website.

Suggested one-pagers:

Make a one-pager for Quality Gurus (Or add additional details to the Primer page on Gurus)

Make a one-pager for quality tools by each phase and know when and how to use them.

Make a one-pager for Formulas/Equations with examples.

Hypothesis testing (Alpha/Beta)

Probability (Non-Parametric as well)

Control Charts

Design of Experiments.

Statistical Tables

What is the best test-taking strategy?

This is how I did it:

• Read the question carefully.
  • Be sure to identify what they are looking for.
• For equations, write out all of the variables on a sheet of paper.
  • Label the number neatly so you can return to it if needed.
  • After enough practice, you’ll recognize what they are asking for based on what they give you to work with.
• Cross off any obviously wrong answers.
  1. Taking the test on paper was so much easier than taking it on the computer. Loved the ability to mark up the questions and possible answers. I felt I really got a psychological burst when I eliminated answers and drew a line through them.
  2. Guessing would give you a 25% chance of getting a question right.
  3. Crossing off one increases to 33%.
  4. Crossing off 2 gives you 50-50 odds.
  5. I found that by eliminating nonsensical answers could immediately answer many questions.
• If you feel like the question will take > 2 mins
  1. choose the best answer you can.
  2. Mark it on your exam to return to it.
  3. Write down any thoughts on your numbered scrap paper.
  4. If you must return, any marked-off answers will help you focus your attention.
• Keep track of your time.
  1. Review the first 40 questions – check the time to see if you are ahead or behind.
  2. Check time at the 75-question mark.
  3. Check time at the 110 mark.
  4. After the 150, go back to the questions you checked off to return to.
     • I answered every question in order. If I didn’t know it, I looked it up. If I couldn’t figure it out, I made a mark to return to it. This is my version of “stop starting and start finishing.” This goes counter to other strategies where you try to answer the ones you know first and then go back. That always feels needlessly complicated to me. In my mind, I am never concerned about not having enough time to answer all questions. I do get paranoid if I leave questions without my full attention. This strategy helps me remain stress-free throughout the test, although others may think differently. I’m not saying this is right; it’s just what works for me. If you have similar psychology, it may work for you.
     • The calculations cost me a lot of time. Many were compound questions – mash-ups, if you will- where you had to figure out one calculation and apply it to the second half of the question. I should have passed on those as soon as I realized it.
     • I thought there were an inordinate number of questions about statistical problems.

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