I'm using:

SELECT DISTINCT Candidates.Id, Candidates.FirstName, Candidates.LastName, Candidates.ReferenceNumber
FROM Candidates_SkillAreas INNER JOIN
     Candidates ON Candidates.Id = Candidates_SkillAreas.CandidateID
WHERE (Candidates_SkillAreas.SkillAreaID NOT IN (146, 147, 148)) AND (Candidates.IndustryID = 2)
ORDER BY Candidates.LastName, Candidates.ReferenceNumber

but it's returning records containing 146, 147 or 148. What have I got wrong?

just execute code once again as it is running smoothly
on my machine and returning the results as expected.