Client-consultant relationship

By Edward Haigh.

“PwC, an accountancy firm with revenues of $35bn last year, couldn’t deliver accurate figures on the 5,700 votes for the Oscars when it really mattered,” quipped The Guardian in an editorial piece on Monday, following that up with the straight-faced assertion that what happened was: “Enough to make anyone wonder about the role of expertise in the world today.” 

That bears spelling out a little more forcefully: Someone giving someone else the wrong envelope appears to have been enough to satisfy The Guardian--the very opiate of the liberal elite, and a staunch defender of science and reason--that the conditions had been met upon which the role of expertise in the world ought to be called into question. 

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Clients always tell us they want to work with specialists. After all, if the expertise they seek is commonplace, they wouldn’t need to look outside their own organisation for it. Specialists are scarce, and it’s scarcity—always in consulting—that fuels demand. But that doesn’t mean that clients are consistent about what they mean by specialisation.