IQ or cognitive assessments are designed to measure a variety of mental functions, such as reasoning, spatial, comprehension, and judgment. The goal of IQ or cognitive assessment is to obtain an idea of a person's intellectual potential, providing an outline of his or her cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
IQ scores are never an end in themselves but simply tools used wisely in the hands of qualified educational professionals who exercise their clinical judgment rather than depend on psychometric data alone to attain a composite picture of a person's development.