As always, there are ways and means of expressing 'stuff.'

And there are clients who don't want to hear the truth.

Content blandness is ubiquitous–in all forms of consulting. But that's not new. What's more to be noted is violations of consulting process.

As you note, Dennis, you vented your spleen on your client, not the report recipient–and you correctly apologized for that, because you clearly know that the real value add comes from confronting the sources, not kvetching to third parties. You will add value to this client organization when you can figure a way to make your comments to the report recipient, and/or to the consultant in question–not to your client, or even to this blog.

And your client–same thing. You don't indicate for sure, but one gets the impression that neither is he speaking to the consultant, or to the report recipient.

So what we have here is a violation of good consulting process–a half dozen people talking about someone else, and no one confronting anyone responsible with the truth. The highest calling of consulting, I don't care what the content is, is to speak the truth to those responsible, so that responsibility can be allocated and taken.

And while that may be the goal of good process consulting, it also ought to be a best practice in management. Talking to third parties about a problem is worse than useless–it's gossip and avoidance.

Dennis, you clearly do get this (witness your acknowledgement), and for all I know you have in fact had that discussion, and/or perhaps urged your client to do so. And perhaps everyone else on this thread knows it too. And I'm in violation of the rule myself often enough.
But it doesn't hurt to remind us all: consulting is nominally about content, but in fact it's more deeply about making positive change happpen. To that end, we need to help others confront issues–and the best way to do that is to role-model positive confrontation ourselves.

This does add another wrinkle into the idea that we consider the term consulting a dirty word at work.

"con" + "insult" = consult ?

(old one I know, just had to)

Community…exactly as we're seeing worked out on this sensitive issue and among this nascent group.

Why don't all consultants do this? I think it often comes down to hard work. Doing something new is hard work, finding answers is hard work – doing the opposite and covering up is easy.

I agree with you, and covered some of this ground ovre at my place the other day. See http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2007/04/03/pro…

The fundamental issue is listening. Most consultants are too insecure and don't know enough to expose themselves to doing that – they may not know the answers.

Richard