Far from it.
We don’t learn as much about accounting as a Chartered Accountant does.
Unlike what most people think, group ‘A’ services, in most cases are managerial jobs. For example, an IPS officer is not primarily doing policing but the officers from the state cadre will be doing it. The IPS officer will be mostly managing these lower cadres.
It holds true for almost all Group ‘A’ services for which selection is through the UPSC CSE.
In IA&AS too, it is mostly the Group ‘B’ staff who is responsible for doing the auditing and accounting work. The Group ‘A’ officers are responsible for managing them. Therefore, I don’t think we will be as good as CA’s in accounting or auditing, atleast in the early part of our career.
However, from what I have seen, many of my seniors have developed excellent expertise in the job through their experience, that they will give any CA a run for their money in their field of work. Also many of the Audit Officers, and Senior AO’s are experts in their respective fields and very knowledgeable. In the case of commercial audit, where our department conducts supplementary audit over the audit conducted by CA’s there have been many audit observations that the CA firm could not find. There are numerous examples of this happening.