May 2020
Meet Apprentice star and accountant Lubna Farhan
Believe it or not, if it wasnāt for the Beds, Bucks and Herts Chartered Accountantsā District Society then Apprentice star Lubna Farhan may never have become an ACA.
She told the āYour Future in Accountancyā conference recently that the society gave her a much-appreciated scholarship to support her at university on her accounting and management information systems degree. The girl from Luton admits it was only then that she discovered the world of accountancy acronyms ā we are talking ACCA, CIMA and ICAEW here.
From university she joined Grant Thorntonās graduate programme, and said she was āa bit of a shy geek with a first-class degreeā when she started. Farhan stressed that you donāt need to
be the finished article as a graduate ā itās the professional accountancy training that provides you with the softer skills as well as that chartered qualification.
From Grant Thornton she moved on to TK Maxx, where she was promoted to a senior financial accountant. She then moved into a commercial finance manager role. Farhan was on the move again soon after and joined Costa just after she had had her second child. It was while she was on maternity leave that she applied for the BBC show The Apprentice.
In her promotional spiel for the show she explained that she lacked good role models, so decided to become her own!
As she enjoyed studying, she explained she focused on educating herself first, which gave her the confidence to pursue her dreams and aspirations. She told the producers she believed she was now āthe full package, book smart and street smartā, and described herself as āa dark horseā. As she explained: āI came form the council estateā¦ I have made myself into something good and Iām on my way to becoming something great.ā
Talking about her time on the show, Farhan says that she may have left early, but she felt she was always very professional and didnāt let accountancy down. She is also pleased she didnāt get sucked into the back-biting and badmouthing. āIt was a roller-coaster and I found it tough physically, mentally and emotionally.ā
After her brief brush with fame it was back to the day job, now as finance manager, group reporting FP&A at Tesco.
She has also started a public speaking business called Business Decoded, so her journey in accountancy continuesā¦
ā¢ Some 130 people turned out for the LSBF/PQ magazine āYour Future in Accountancyā conference, with another 2,200 delegates joining us online during the morning.
