It is a story that will be familiar to many CAs: your early ambition is to work in one particular field, but either there’s a shortage of roles available or the time isn’t quite right. But you are good with numbers, so you study accounting and business. You qualify as a CA, then discover that your qualification provides you with a different, perhaps unexpected route to fulfil that ambition. 

When Elizabeth Gammie CA was younger, she wanted to emulate her mother and go into teaching. “At the time, there were no jobs available for primary school teachers,” she says. “So my parents said, ‘Why don’t you go and do a business degree, and then go into the family farming and motor trade business?’

“I went to Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen, where I discovered that I really enjoyed accounting as a subject. I was lucky that, while I had chosen a general business course, it offered a thick sandwich year, which gave me an opportunity to work for 12 months and test out whether my chosen route was, in fact, the right one for a long-term career.

“So I was delighted to be offered a 12-month placement with Ernst & Whinney [now EY] and absolutely loved it. At the end of my placement, they offered me a training contract on completion of my degree, which I readily accepted. So I joined the firm properly 12 months later. I learnt so much during my training contract and thoroughly enjoyed the experience – with the exception perhaps of sitting the ICAS examinations – and met some great people. I’m still very good friends with a lot of them. But I still had that education idea in the back of my mind.

“Just as I qualified as a CA I was approached by RGU, who asked if I would be interested in a job as an accounting lecturer. While this was an attractive offer at that stage in my career, I didn’t feel I had quite enough credibility as a newly qualified CA to stand up in front of a class full of final-year students, when I was probably only three years older than them.

“So I stayed at EY and specialised in tax. I loved tax as a subject, although not quite so much in practice. So when RGU got back in touch about two years after I’d qualified, and asked me again if I was interested in becoming a lecturer, I thought, actually, maybe now is the right time to dip my toe in the waters of education.”

The lesson begins

So the academic career began. Elizabeth would go on to become Head of Accounting and Finance at RGU and then Dean of its Aberdeen Business School in 2016. Having reaped the benefits of a work placement as part of her degree, work-integrated learning has always been a focus. Her work led to the university becoming the first in Scotland to award full credit for learning undertaken in the workplace.

“This was my first research project as I questioned why there was no academic acknowledgement for work placements when clearly so much learning takes place – the resulting output was full academic credit for the placement and an ultimate shortening of the honours degree,” she says.

“I also developed the graduate apprenticeship programme between RGU and ICAS, which has been hugely successful and continues to grow. I love that ICAS is now really embracing the flexibility of routes and training, and making the CA qualification more accessible to so many more people.”

Under Elizabeth’s leadership, the Aberdeen Business School achieved AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation, becoming only the second new university in the UK to do so, and was named Times Higher Education Business School of the Year in 2020.

“I’m always looking to do things better. But I think that a continuous-improvement philosophy is a good thing in the context of a member body”

Throughout her academic career she maintained close ties with ICAS, including two spells as a member of the ICAS Council, the first coming in 2009. She was also one of the co-founders of the ICAS Foundation in 2014 and became Chair of the Qualifications Board in 2022, helping to ensure that the rollout of the new syllabus, with its new ways of learning and flexibility for exams, did not affect the quality of the CA qualification.

“The new syllabus has been warmly welcomed, both by firms and students. Introducing options into the education provision allows students following different career paths to study subjects relevant to them, and it is really gratifying to see improvements in both pass rates and the student experience. It was a brave move by ICAS, as it required a significant investment to develop, implement and deliver, but as an institute we should reap the benefits as we now have an exciting educational offer.”

Having seen the impact of recent changes up close, Elizabeth is now deepening her involvement with ICAS even further, as the newly appointed Vice President, adding to the various voluntary roles she’s filled over the years. “I’ve enjoyed all the different roles I’ve had within ICAS. Chairing the Qualifications Board was not only great on a personal level, but also gave me more of a visible platform among Council members. And I was just absolutely thrilled to be asked to become an office bearer.

“ICAS, and indeed the profession, are entering a really challenging time. But I’m looking forward to that challenge and seeing how we can steer it through the tricky waters lying ahead.

“ICAS is a small institute but an incredibly valuable one that punches way above its weight as it leads the way in so many areas. But we need to keep evolving to stay ahead of the game. That’s going to be particularly important in what could be a challenging marketplace for graduates. Training places in many of the largest organisations have been reduced, and that’s not just down to AI, but a combination of factors.”

That said, AI inevitably comes up in conversation. “From an educator’s perspective, we can use learning analytics, for example, to identify if students are struggling with the material at an earlier stage, and put mechanisms in place to support them if needed,” says Elizabeth. 

“I think AI is an opportunity, but it is also a threat. I can put something into an AI tool and ask it to answer a question or perform a task, which saves time, but I then need to critically evaluate what it produces.

“This critical evaluation is crucial – and hopefully I have the skillset that enables me to do this. The challenge moving forward, however, is how do we as educators develop the right skills in students when so much information is at their fingertips?

“It’s important to train people to ask the right questions, and the right follow-up questions, so you get the best answer. And even then you still need to know what you’re looking for to ensure the answer is correct.

“Quite early on, when AI tools became widely and freely available, we had this great idea at RGU that we were going to ask students to submit their coursework assignment into AI, and we would then assess the changes, corrections and improvements the student had made to the AI-generated output.

“The problem now is that in some areas AI can produce a better answer than many students, so the design of the assessment instrument is critical to make sure we are testing the right skills. Authorship of submitted work is an area of concern. And while testing students through closed-book examinations mitigates against this risk, closed-book assessments are not necessarily authentic and are subsequently criticised for not helping develop the right skills in candidates.

“Assessment is therefore a real minefield, but ICAS is well equipped to respond to these challenges, and is one of the few bodies currently using a variety of different types of assessment instruments as part of their education provision.”

Road ahead

All being well, Elizabeth is now on the road to becoming ICAS Deputy President next year, followed by President in 2028.

“I’m looking forward to getting out there and meeting members. We must never lose sight of the fact that we are a member body and that we need to drive value for members. My family always tease me by saying, ‘You’re never quite satisfied, are you?’ I’m always looking to do things better. But I think that a continuous-improvement philosophy is a good thing in the context of a member body.”

In 2024, Elizabeth decided to retire from education. She now holds several non-executive roles, including being a board member of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), Scotland’s tertiary education and research funding authority, which distributes around £2bn of public money to support the sector in Scotland. “There is a whole issue around doing so in what is a very tight fiscal environment,” she says.

In a way, her appointment to the SFC has brought things full circle for Elizabeth. “I think what swung my appointment wasn’t my extensive higher education career,” she says. “It was being a CA, combined with that education experience. So we go back to what my qualification has given me. Without doubt it has opened lots of doors for me throughout my career and I am very proud to call myself a CA”

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