Hi Cheri, we haven't tested substituting cream chesse for shortening in cookies, but the issue you will likely run into is that cream cheese has a lot less fat than shortening (which is 100% fat), while cream cheese is generally only 33% fat and also contains water and milk solids, so it's definitely going to impact the texture and spread of the cookies significantly. Butter and cream cheese are slightly more comparable, but butter is still quite a bit higher in fat (80%). When we incorporate cream cheese into a cookie recipe it's usually only a small portion of the fat content, and we find that this results in a puffier, cakier cookie. 

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