‘There’s no such thing as a silly question here’ – three young professionals on confidence, growth and finding their place

KPMG apprentice Ciara Ferguson: ‘I’ve never worked somewhere where people genuinely care about you like this.’ Photograph: PR

For Malcolm Scarlett-Russell, a career in finance “always felt like a ceiling I couldn’t ever reach in this life”. Having missed a year of school as a teenager due to a serious hip injury – one that temporarily left him in a wheelchair with a 75% chance of never walking again – his sense of possibility shrank and he was left feeling like he was falling behind his peers.

When he landed a place on a KPMG apprenticeship scheme three years ago, these doubts followed him. Feeling self-conscious about his south London accent, Scarlett-Russell says he initially “tried to speak the Queen’s English” at work.