I had a call with HR and proceeded on to the next stage with a senior member of the hiring team. The HR representative was organised and informative throughout the process. When I spoke to the senior member of the team, I asked if the firm has initiatives around supporting employees' continued education and growth. The answer to this was that there have been employees who've moved diagonally to functions they were interested in and that was encouraged. Not quite what I was looking for, and I took it to mean there wasn't much formally in place. I then asked what were the responsibilities of the senior members of the team (which happened to be the position of the interviewer) as that was the next rung on the ladder for the role I was applying to so I can gauge the growth expectations. I also mentioned this is for 2 -3 years down the line. The interviewer was not clear in answering this and articulating the difference - I put it down to because it was fairly new and there wasn't a well-defined path, we moved on. I was then told I was not successful in moving to the next interview stage because I have shown I am interested in another role in the firm instead of the one I was applying to. If it was due to either one of the questions above or both, it was bizarre because generally employers wouldn't want to hire someone who'd happily stagnate but I'm glad I didn't get any further.