Consulting and industry research are often purchased for one reason only: validation
What I could not get my head around was having to force-fit analysis to a conclusion. In one case, the question I was tasked with solving had a clear and unambiguous answer: By my estimate, the client’s plan of action had a net present discounted value of negative one billion dollars. Even after accounting for some degree of error in my reckoning, I could still be sure that theirs was a losing proposition. But the client did not want analysis that contradicted their own, and my manager told me plainly that it was not our place to question what the client wanted.
Some humans have some integrity.
At some point early in my career, I found myself in a similar situation with a different consulting company.
The client was one of the biggest and most well-known institutions in Italy.
I resigned rather than presenting a force-fit analysis to accommodate the conclusions that the client wanted to see even before issuing the bid for the consulting job.
Consulting and industry research are often purchased for one reason only: validation.