A failed exam is a bad week, not a bad accountant.

A failed exam is a bad week, not a bad accountant
Posted on 8 July 2026 by Lydia Sinclair

Why the big firms are losing good people over exam policy, and why the candidate another practice quietly let go might be the best hire you make this year.

Picture the no pile.

It's the small stack of CVs a hiring partner sets aside in the first couple of minutes. Something didn't sit right. A gap nobody explained. A move that looked odd on paper. An exam that clearly went wrong somewhere. Onto the pile it goes, and the search carries on without it.

I understand the instinct. When you're busy and a desk is sitting empty, you read CVs looking for reasons to narrow the list, not widen it. But after a lot of years doing this in one corner of the profession, I can tell you the no pile is where good hires quietly disappear.

At the moment it's filling up with a very particular kind of candidate. I think they deserve a second look, and this is my case for why.

The policy nobody mentions until it matters

Most people join a large firm knowing the exams are part of the deal. What surprises them is how little room there is when a sitting goes wrong.

The bigger firms tend to run firm, structured exam policies. Pass and you progress. Fail at the wrong point, or fail twice, and the conversation about your future can become very short indeed. It doesn't matter much that your managers rated you, or that your clients liked you, or that you'd had a strong year otherwise. The policy is the policy, and it can override all of it.

From the outside that looks tidy. From the inside it can feel brutal, especially when life was the reason the exam slipped. A bereavement. A new baby. Illness. A bad run of timing that would knock anyone sideways. The exam doesn't ask what else was going on that month, and neither, often, does the policy.

So the person starts looking. Not because they've fallen out of love with the work, but because one result has quietly been allowed to become their whole story.

A pass rate is not a measure of the job

Here's the part I'd ask every hiring partner to sit with.

Exams test whether someone can pass exams. That's not nothing. But it's a long way from testing whether someone is good at the actual work of practice.

I've met technically gifted people who sailed through every paper first time, then struggled the moment a client wanted reassurance rather than a technically perfect answer. And I've met people who stumbled badly on a sitting, felt like a failure for a while, and turned out to be exactly the accountant a growing business needed. Calm under pressure. Good with people. Able to explain a set of accounts to a worried owner in plain English.

The mark on the CV and the quality of the accountant are two separate things. We forget that, because the mark is easy to read and the quality takes a conversation to uncover.

Why this matters more right now

I'm seeing more movement out of the big firms than I have in a long time, and exam policy is a big part of it.

For an independent practice, that's an opportunity you don't always get. Genuinely capable, part-qualified and newly qualified people are on the market who, a year or two ago, would have been locked into a training contract and out of reach. They come with good grounding, real client exposure, and a strong reason to want somewhere that treats them as more than a pass rate.

If your growth plans have been stuck on "we can't find the right people", it's worth knowing the pool looks different this summer.

If you're the one who's been let go

I want to talk directly to you for a moment, because I know some of you are reading this because it happened.

It was a bad week. It was not a verdict on your career.

The temptation, when a firm lets you go, is to grab the first thing that comes along to stop the awful feeling of being unwanted. Please try not to. A rushed move made from a low moment is how good people end up somewhere no better than the place they left.

Take a breath. Work out what you actually want from the next few years, and what kind of practice would help you get there. Then look for that, deliberately. The right firms are out there, the ones who care far more about how you handle a portfolio than about one line on a transcript. I spend my week talking to them.

How to assess these candidates properly

If you're hiring and a CV lands with a knock on it, resist the reflex to bin it. Pick up the phone instead. A few questions usually tell you everything the CV can't.

- What was going on around the exam that didn't go to plan?
- What have they actually run day to day, and for what kind of clients?
- How do they talk about their work? Is there real understanding there, or just process?
- What do they want next, and does it match what you can offer?

You're screening for the work, not the transcript. Ten minutes on the phone will tell you more about someone's judgement than any pass rate ever could.

Why independent practices tend to win here

Independents have a real edge with these candidates, and it's worth naming.

The work is broader, so people learn faster and stay interested. The person matters more, because there's nowhere to hide in a smaller team and no appetite to treat anyone as a number. And progression can be genuine rather than theoretical. A good manager can see a path to director without waiting a decade for a slot to open in a firm of thousands.

For someone who has just been made to feel disposable, that difference lands hard. It's often the thing that makes them say yes.

Get the start right, and they'll stay

One last thing, because winning the hire is only half of it.

Someone who has recently been let go arrives carrying a bit of caution. The first few weeks matter more than usual. A proper induction, a clear picture of what good looks like by month three, and someone who actually owns their start will settle them quickly and earn real loyalty. Skip it, and even a great hire will keep one eye on the door.

The offer gets them through the door. The start is what makes them stay.

Final thought

The no pile is comfortable. It keeps the shortlist short and the process moving. But every so often it costs you the best person who applied, and you never even know it.

The candidates the big firms are letting go this year are not damaged goods. Many of them are simply good accountants who had a hard week inside a system with no room for one. Give them a phone call before you give them a no.

If you've a hire coming up where getting the right person really matters, or you've been let go yourself and want to think clearly about what comes next, I'm always happy to talk it through. You can read more about how we help candidates plan their next move here: protalent.eu/career-advisory

Lydia Sinclair
ProTalent