Driven by requirements prescribed by professional bodies, the accounting curriculum in many higher education institutions in South Africa and Nigeria demands high cognitive attributes from graduates. Advancing the proposition that assessment drives learning, the authors contend that cognitive demand can be determined by analysing the assessment tasks in students' textbooks. Using a conceptual framework based on Bloom's revised taxonomy and levels of difficulty theory, this article analyses the cognitive demand of assessment tasks in selected chapters of level one Financial Accounting textbooks in South Africa and Nigeria. The findings indicate that the bulk of the assessment tasks in the selected texts are pitched within middle and lower cognitive hybrids with limited tasks at higher levels. The article offers new insights into graduate attributes, assessment tasks and cognitive demand. It also suggests an alternative approach to assessing cognitive skills, specifically within the discipline of accounting to ensure a closer fit between training and the demands of the work place.