In September 1996, 148 candidates sat for the first Australian Clinical Coder (ACC) accreditation examination at 19 sites across Australia and New Zealand. This event was an important milestone for clinical coders in Australia. Around one third of the candidates who sat for the exam gained accreditation. The results show that the candidates who were most likely to be successful in gaining accreditation: worked in public hospitals (of any size) or private hospitals with more than 150 beds spent 25 hours or more each week on coding or coding-related activities had been coding for three or more years. The greatest percentage of successful candidates had been coding for 10 or more years.