How the ASE Certification Test is Made

Dan Aldrich and Ryan Kooiman discuss how automotive SMEs from across the industry vet every question of the ASE certification test to ensure it's the industry's best.
July 21, 2026
5 min read
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Key Highlights

 

  • ASE certifications are the industry's only standardized credential: In a profession without mandatory licensing, ASE certifications are what distinguish professional technicians from the rest—making them essential for career credibility.

  • Subject matter experts come from every corner of the industry: SMEs include educators, shop owners, OEM engineers, aftermarket trainers, and franchise leaders. ASE prioritizes diversity across geography, gender, and race to ensure balanced input.

  • Every question undergoes rigorous vetting: Before writing new content, SMEs audit existing questions using performance data. New questions go through multiple revision rounds, debate by the full group, and must meet consensus—if they don't pass, they're rewritten or discarded entirely.

  • Questions are designed to be fair across all manufacturers: The test-writing process ensures questions don't favor one manufacturer over another and can be understood by working technicians under time pressure, even if wording initially leaves room for misinterpretation.
Dan Aldrich
6a5f8463e016eae0e522520c Dan Aldrich Formatted

For many technicians, ASE tests are a necessary hurdle on the road to professional recognition. What many don't know is how ASE tests are built, who writes them, and how much time and effort goes into every question and subject matter.

"In a world where we don't have mandatory licenses to do this job, the only thing we have standardized across the industry is ASE certifications," Dan Aldrich, director of automotive technical training at Christian Brothers Automotive in Houston, Texas, said. "So to not be a certified technician and consider yourself a professional … those are like oil and water."

Behind the blue seal is a highly focused, dedicated community of subject matter experts drawn from every corner of the industry. Subject matter experts are educators, shop owners, OEM engineers, aftermarket trainers, and franchise leaders. Together, they shape the tests that define what it means to be a certified professional technician in the automotive industry.

To learn more about the process, Aldrich and Ryan Kooiman—director of training at Standard Motor Products in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and an ASE Board Member since 2023—offer an inside look as ASE subject matter experts who have both taken a seat at the ASE test writing table.

 

Who Becomes an ASE SME?

The qualifications to become an SME are simple: you must be a part of the automotive industry.

"ASE is well represented at a lot of industry events and industry forums, and just overall well plugged in," Kooiman said. "They have relationships with many different people and many different companies. So, when they are looking for SMEs, they might reach out to Honda or BMW or Toyota and say, 'We need a representative for this particular workshop, can you send somebody in here, or can you recommend somebody?'"

ASE is very diligent about getting a diverse team of people to participate in its workshops and often has representation in every way one can measure diversity.

"They look for diversity from coast to coast, in gender, and in race," Kooiman said. "That way ASE has a good blend of input."

Additionally, people are always welcome to reach out to ASE and volunteer themselves for the SME position.

 

Inside the Workshop

Once an individual has agreed to be an SME, they will be invited to attend a week-long ASE test writing workshop. In the past, the workshops were in person, but since COVID-19, they take place online.

The first order of business isn't writing new content. It's auditing existing questions. ASE brings in performance data—questions that are consistently missed, answer choices that are disproportionately selected—and the group dissects each item.

"If there's a question that's constantly getting missed, they will pull that from the system and audit it," Aldrich explains. "We'll break it down and have an open discussion about it. Is this question broken? Does it need to be fixed?"

Often, the group finds that the underlying concept is sound, but the wording leaves room for misinterpretation, especially for working technicians under time pressure.

After the warm-up of auditing questions, the group will shift into building new questions. ASE starts by going over the test writing guide, i.e., how to properly format a question, and types of questions to avoid.

 

Ryan Kooiman
Ryan Kooiman says ASE pursues a diverse team of people to participate in its workshops and has equal representation in every way possible.

Ryan Kooiman says ASE pursues a diverse team of people to participate in its workshops and has equal representation in every way possible.

 

Designed for Every Technician

After ASE guidelines have been reviewed, the people will break away into question writing groups.

"The writing groups write the questions, submit them to the administrators, and then the administrators will edit and ensure they are formatted properly and present them back to the writing group," Kooiman said. "After several rounds of revisions are made, the questions will be presented to the collective workshop group and everyone will debate it to make sure that the question is stated clearly in a manner that doesn't favor one manufacturer over another, that everybody can agree upon the intent of the question, and that the correct answer is what it should be, and then it will get put into the bank."

If the question is not clear or favors one group of people over the other, it gets tabled, and a group might rewrite the question two or three more times until it gets a full group consensus. If not, it officially gets discarded or indefinitely tabled.

"The challenge is anticipating how the questions are going to be received by other people," Aldrich said. "I was blown away by the whole process. These questions get vetted by some of the brightest individuals in the industry; a lot of people would recognize some of the names that participate in this. They put every ASE question through the wringer."

At the end of the week, test questions are completed, and participants receive an ASE Subject Matter Expert medallion, but they take away more than just that. They come away with a better understanding of what the blue seal represents.

"If more technicians saw behind the scenes of how these questions were actually built—and how much they're labored over and considered—they would have a completely different perspective of how much that blue seal certification means when they pass their ASE test," Aldrich said.

About the Author

Emily Kline

Emily Kline

Emily Kline is a Special Projects Editor for FenderBender and ABRN, ABW, Motor Age, and Ratchet+Wrench. She also produces an annual publication for SATA called Painter's Playbook, is a Senior Contributing Editor for NAPA INSIGHT, and oversees Ratchet+Wrench's Shop Goods issues and FenderBender's Ultimate Collision Repair Shop.

She has worked in the Vehicle Service & Repair Group at Endeavor Business Media for over 3 years, learning about vehicle repair and the automotive industry as a whole. She has a bachelor's degree in English from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in Winona. As a writer, she enjoys her fair share of reading and has no shame in using the long Minnesota winters as an excuse to stay indoors and cozy up with a good book.