When you get older you tend to get more déjà vu experiences. That funny feeling of having seen or done something before and, having trod the dusty paths of the IT industry certainly increases this feeling dramatically.
There is a trend gradually emerging from the beaten ranks of consulting firms. The new buzzword is “integrity”. Yes, you know, as in: adherence to a code of especially moral values.
It all started way back with the Enron thing and others were quick to follow. It seems there was a problem with the advice given and the quality of the auditing. Next thing you hear of is legislation with fierce requirements on auditing and some tough code of ethics.
It’s like the Harrisburg thing. All of a sudden everybody agrees that close monitoring and independent auditing of certain energy facilities is a great idea.
You just can’t trust your consultants these days, can you? It’s always the butler that did it. Now before we run along that road we may ask how we got where we are. It’s not that complicated, it’s just business.
Once upon a time close to the dark Middle Ages consulting firms got their new business by gaining a reputation of being professional and incorruptible. After that consultants started to get a feeling for the good life on big business. They merged and started to look for “scale of business” and “strategic partnerships”.
In our line of business that often means that consulting firms have partnerships with IBM or Microsoft. What happens next is client comes knocking on the door and asks for independent advice on some technical issue.
Client talks at lengths about problems and at the end of the first meeting business cards are exchanged. The consultant, or independent advisor, shoves a card across the conference table full of words like “XX Consulting INC, Microsoft Gold Partner, and IBM Solution Provider” and the title of the consultant reads something like: “Senior Solution Architect”.
Later the consultant starts building a solution in real life before the exact problem has been established. Proposals are shipped offering .NET or Webshere solutions. But it seems that ethically there is nothing wrong, the client is offered several options to choose from.
Now the next interesting thing comes along. The client is offered an implementation of the selected “solution” by the consulting firm itself. So, the client asked for independent advice and got an independent solution. Where’s the problem?
Where did the problem actually go? Somehow the problem just evaporated and emerged as a solution build with the independent consultants preferred technology platform provider (or the one with the largest referral fees).
Where the professional and independent consultant may argue that by selecting and implement a solution for the client they become more “committed”. Fine word committed. Like bacon and eggs: the hen provides eggs and is involved; the pig provides bacon and is thus committed.
Good point but it just doesn’t work that way. The independent consultant will shield any problem with the proposed solution from the client as minor risks, or perhaps even avoid mentioning problems. The cynic will claim that it’s because later on in the process the consultant will also become part of the solution that removes these problems.
Now let’s get to the point. The independent consultant as such does not exist. The independent consultant will always be looking for more work, be that billable consulting work or billable implementation work.
Where does that leave the client need of independent advice?
One way to solve that problem is to make it understood – in writing – that the consultant is hired to identify the problem and to suggest vendor independent solutions.
The real issue here of course is that integrity got lost somewhere along the road. Money has always been in the game, that’s neither a problem nor an issue. Things went wrong when the sense of proportion went missing as well. There is a fine line a consultant always must be able to follow. You work for the client; you must put the client’s interest above your own petty need for billable business. That’s the hard part. That’s when integrity really starts to hurt. Most people can’t stand to get hurt, that’s why you just can’t trust people anymore.