qt.qpa.plugin: Could not find the Qt platform plugin "windows" in ""

when trying to run my application. It is failing to find the plugin, and as you'll notice, the empty string says its not really even looking anywhere. I have tried to resolve this by using:

QCoreApplication::addLibraryPath(pluginLocation.c_str());

to explicitly add the plugin path and as you'll note from the screenshot, when I output the QCoreApplication::libraryPaths, it returns the correct location, however it appears qt is just ignoring that path.

Ive also tried setting QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH and got the same result. Seems like its just ignoring all this.