The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 5 letter word SCALE
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
S
C
A
L
E
More clues leading to the result SCALE
- Encrustation to mount
- Climb in mountainous Caledonia
- Flake found in case of Slavic beer
- Go up to reach the hierarchy
- Notes magnitude for climb
- System of measurement of plaque
- Such a clue oddly established standard
- Climb peaks in Swiss cantons and, lastly, Everest
- Plate of fish
- Deposit account held by famous driver is mounting
Buddy explains!

The straight part
We know that "Notes/magnitude/climb" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case notes/magnitude/climb = scale.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does SCALE mean?
SCALE noun- A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
- An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement, means of assigning a magnitude.
- Size; scope.
- The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
- A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced.
- A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
- A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.
- Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
- A standard amount of money to be received by a performer or writer, negotiated by a union.
- To change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion; especially to change a process in order to produce much larger amounts of the final product.
- To climb to the top of.
- To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
- To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
- Part of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard pieces of keratin covering the skin of an animal, particularly a fish or reptile.
- A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
- A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
- Part of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard protective layers forming a pinecone that flare when mature to release pine nut seeds.
- The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
- Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
- Limescale.
- A scale insect.
- The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
- To remove the scales of.
- To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.
- To strip or clear of scale; to descale.
- To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
- To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.
- To scatter; to spread.
- To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
- A device to measure mass or weight.
- Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.