ICAS

Quicklinks

  1. About Us

    Find out about who we are and what we do here at ICAS.

  2. Find a CA

    Search our directory of individual CAs and Member organisations by name, location and professional criteria.

  3. CA Magazine

    View the latest issues of the dedicated magazine for ICAS Chartered Accountants.

  4. Contact Us

    Get in touch with ICAS by phone, email or post, with dedicated contacts for Members, Students and firms.

Login
  • Annual renewal
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Find a CA
  1. About us
    1. Governance
    2. ICAS Strategy 2030
  2. Members
    1. Become a member
    2. Newly qualified
    3. Manage my membership
    4. Benefits of membership
    5. Career support
    6. Mentoring
    7. CA Wellbeing
    8. More for Members
    9. Area networks
    10. International communities
    11. Get involved
    12. Top Young CAs
    13. Career breaks
    14. ICAS podcast
    15. Newly admitted members 2022
    16. Newly admitted members 2023
  3. CA Students
    1. Student information
    2. Student resources
    3. Learning requirements
    4. Learning updates
    5. Learning blog
    6. Totum Pro | Student discount card
    7. CA Student wellbeing
  4. Become a CA
    1. How to become a CA
    2. Routes to becoming a CA
    3. CA Stories
    4. Find a training agreement
    5. Why become a CA
    6. Qualification information
    7. University exemptions
  5. Employers
    1. Become an Authorised Training Office
    2. Resources for Authorised Training Offices
    3. Professional entry
    4. Apprenticeships
    5. Learning redefined
  6. Find a CA
  7. ICAS events
    1. CA Summit
    2. Digital practice conference 2023
  8. CA magazine
  9. Insight
    1. Finance + Trust
    2. Technology
    3. Finance + EDI
    4. Finance + Mental Fitness
    5. Finance + Leadership
    6. Finance + Sustainability
  10. Professional resources
    1. Anti-money laundering
    2. Audit and assurance
    3. Brexit
    4. Business and governance
    5. Charities
    6. Coronavirus
    7. Corporate and financial reporting
    8. Cyber security
    9. Ethics
    10. Insolvency
    11. ICAS Research
    12. Pensions
    13. Practice
    14. Public sector
    15. Sustainability
    16. Tax
  11. CPD - professional development
    1. CPD - Everything you need to know
    2. CPD courses and qualifications
    3. CPD news and updates
    4. CPD support and advice
    5. Career support
  12. Regulation
    1. Complaints and sanctions
    2. Regulatory authorisations
    3. Guidance and help sheets
    4. Regulatory monitoring
  13. CA jobs
    1. CA jobs partner: Rutherford Cross
    2. Resources for your job search
    3. Advertise with CA jobs
    4. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
    5. Azets | What's your ambition?
  14. Work at ICAS
    1. Business centres
    2. Meet our team
    3. Benefits
    4. Vacancies
    5. Imagine your career at ICAS
  15. Contact us
    1. Technical and regulation queries
    2. ICAS logo request

Dr Tom Mitchell shares the story behind CGPM Consulting

  • LinkedIn (opens new window)
  • Twitter (opens new window)
By CA magazine

30 March 2023

Edinburgh-based CGPM Consulting specialises in two very different fields – charities and internal investigations. Partner Dr Tom Mitchell talks Fraser Allen through his varied career and why he’s now aiming to give something back

Read April's CA magazine now

Education is the key

Dr Tom Mitchell CA’s qualification has proved to be a passport both to the world and to a richly varied career. “I think it’s an illustration of what you can do with a CA,” he says. “I’ve always seen it as a doorway to opportunities. I didn’t want to follow the typical career path of the time, which was to come out of audit, become a management accountant and go up the chain. I don’t know why but I knew that wasn’t for me.”

In fact, it seemed unlikely that accounting of any kind was for Mitchell until relatively late. He started life in his family’s market gardening business, and might still be there had the sector not shrunk. He earned a PhD in horticultural biochemistry, looking to learn the theory behind the practice. “But by that time, it was 1988 and the market gardening sector had collapsed, so I had to look for something else to do. Then I saw a big sign in the library at Reading, saying ‘Free transport, free meal and £30 in your pocket’. The job was to act as a guinea-pig interviewee for partners and managers at KPMG who were being trained for the milk round. I came out of it with a job.”

Mitchell qualified at KPMG in 1991, and soon gained international experience, working at KPMG Warsaw, before moving to Coopers and Lybrand in Slovakia. His next assignment was with Bank of Scotland, first in new product development in the Asia-Pacific high-net-worth market “and a bit of risk management in Europe”, before moving to a troubleshooting role within the business. His overseas adventures continued after Bank of Scotland, with a couple of years at the Bank of Bermuda and a spell with KPMG Thailand. “And by the end of Thailand, my wife said ‘Tom, it’s time you were home!’”

Breaking out

Settled back in Scotland, Mitchell worked for Mazars and Chiene + Tait, before making his break from the “traditional career path” and founding CGPM Consulting in 2008 in Edinburgh with the goal of filling a gap in the charities market. “The big charities were very well served, but access to specialist governance and risk services was more challenging,” he says. “So we specialised in supporting organisations holding a charity registration including social housing, tertiary education, etc, and have since worked with some of the larger ones too. We’ve also provided full-scope board secretarial services.”

Mitchell also developed a second strand to the business, focused on governance, finance and regulatory investigations, typically addressing financial irregularities, governance failures and the misconduct of senior employees. “It was driven by a lot of the turnaround work and troubleshooting I had done earlier in my career,” he says. “We’ve been very fortunate that most of the charity business we have generated has been word of mouth, and client retention has been very good,” he adds. “But of course, on the investigation side, client retention doesn’t really apply because you’re the person giving the bad news!”

Of late, Mitchell has been downsizing the business and looking to the next stage of his life. “Personal circumstances changed during the pandemic and made me think differently about the future, so I’m very focused on achieving a greater balance between professional, pro bono and personal commitments.  That said, I’m involved in a digital governance start-up focused on small and micro-charities,” he says.

Mitchell, who sits on the ICAS Charities Panel, will also continue the extra-curricular charity work he has been cultivating for the past 15 years. Having developed “a growing sense of wanting to give something back”, Mitchell became a trustee of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland in 2008. That was followed by a similar role at the Donkey Sanctuary, which is headquartered in Devon but operates worldwide. Initially unsure whether to take the role, his imagination was captured by the scale of the challenge that the organisation has embraced.

“There are parallels with the Royal Zoological Society,” he says. “Animal welfare, education, conservation and animal crime – for instance, there’s a huge problem with donkey rustling, particularly in Africa, driven largely by the Chinese trade in extracting collagen for skin products. The Donkey Sanctuary does a lot more than I initially realised – and on a huge scale. And they’re very good at what they do.”

As well as the Donkey Sanctuary, Mitchell works with the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, which focuses on practical forestry education. In a sense, the wheel has turned full circle.

cgpm-consulting.co.uk

Read April's CA magazine now

CA magazine: April 2023

By Sarah Speirs, ICAS Executive Director of Member Engagement and Communication

30 March 2023

2023-05-markselectrical 2023-05-markselectrical

Footer links

  • Contact us
  • Terms and conditions
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Privacy notice
  • CA magazine

Connect with ICAS

  • Facebook (opens new window) Facebook Icon
  • Twitter (opens new window) Twitter Icon
  • LinkedIn (opens new window) LinkedIn Icon
  • Instagram (opens new window) Instagram Icon

ICAS is a member of the following bodies

  • Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (opens new window) Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies logo
  • Chartered Accountants Worldwide (opens new window) Chartered Accountants Worldwide logo
  • Global Accounting Alliance (opens new window) Global Accounting Alliance
  • International Federation of Accountants (opens new window) IFAC
  • Access Accountancy (opens new window) Access Acountancy

Charities

  • ICAS Foundation (opens new window) ICAS Foundation
  • SCABA (opens new window) scaba

Accreditations

  • ISO 9001 - RGB (opens new window)
© ICAS 2022

The mark and designation “CA” is a registered trade mark of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), and is available for use in the UK and EU only to members of ICAS. If you are not a member of ICAS, you should not use the “CA” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to accountancy, tax or insolvency services. The mark and designation “Chartered Accountant” is a registered trade mark of ICAS, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Chartered Accountants Ireland. If you are not a member of one of these organisations, you should not use the “Chartered Accountant” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to these services. Further restrictions on the use of these marks also apply where you are a member.

Our cookie policy

ICAS.com uses cookies which are essential for our website to work. We would also like to use analytical cookies to help us improve our website and your user experience. Any data collected is anonymised. Please have a look at the further information in our cookie policy and confirm if you are happy for us to use analytical cookies: