When you hire a consultant, you enter into a very intricate and delicate relationship, one that has the potential to do great good or serious harm to your business.

Although consultants may seem to be a modern phenomenon, they have existed for thousands of years. Look at the “seven lean years followed by seven fat years” economic forecast produced by Joseph in the Book of Genesis and you will see that he spent part of his day working as a business consultant.

Many businesses use poor consultants, often without knowing it, and often it’s their own fault: they devote so little effort to the hiring process. Finding a good consultant is as difficult as finding a spouse, and yet most businesses spend a week or two conducting what amount to fairly shallow interviews. They then make a choice, often not even checking references or professional credentials on the résumé.

Contrast that with the elaborate process of choosing a mate for marriage. Multiple interviews (dates) are conducted in a variety of circumstances over a period of time that can stretch into years. The opinions of friends and family members are solicited and weighed. Sometimes the two parties simulate the state of marriage for a period of months or even years in an effort to determine their level of compatibility. The ballooning divorce rate demonstrates the difficulty of finding a spouse. Should it come as a surprise that the failure rate for consultant/client relationships is even higher than for marriages?

If you already have consultants working for you, it’s too late to read the many articles that have been written about how to choose one. What you really need is a short list of warning signs that, to put it gently, your consultant is less effective than you would hope.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence for 20 years. I have worked as a consultant and I’ve also evaluated and interacted with consultants. I’ve advised clients on competing bids from consultants and software developers and gained a lot of anecdotal evidence in the process. There is nothing complex about any of my conclusions; they strike me as nothing more than commonsense. Nonetheless, associates and clients assure me that they are useful and they have encouraged me to share.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you attempt to root out the bad consultants in your organization.

1) Do you and your consultant share a common language?

While many consultants have gaps in their technical skills, there are far more that can’t communicate in any language. Clear, crisp communication is the lifeblood of business.

In the past year I’ve had frustrating and time-wasting conversations with two university-trained consultants who didn’t know the meaning of the words “archive” and “intermittent”, respectively. I’ve since avoided contact with either consultant because I’ve come to believe in a rule of thumb used by farmers to estimate their rodent populations.

According to the Mississippi State University Extension Service in the article Control Commensal Rodents In Poultry Houses:
“If you never see rodents but see signs of them, there are from 1 to 100 on the premises. If you see them occasionally at night, there are 100 to 500. Seeing several in the daytime may indicate a presence of as many as 5,000.”

In other words, if your consultant draws a blank on what you consider to be a basic word, you can be fairly confident that there are dozens and even hundreds of other such gaps lurking in his vocabulary, waiting to mushroom into communications problems.

2) Does your consultant change sex, age, and appearance without warning?

This is a common problem and not as mysterious as it sounds.

One of my clients, a growing business that needed a customized database application, engaged a large consulting/software development firm with over 100 employees.

A highly-qualified project manager and a single programmer were assigned to the project. Progress was swift at the beginning but then the project manager was assigned to a new and much bigger project at a bank. He left so quickly he didn’t have the time to bring his replacement up to speed. A month later the programmer left to go back to university for a graduate degree. His replacement was less experienced (no surprise) and less aware of the nature of the project. After several other additions and subtractions to the project team, the finished product was delivered to the client.

It didn’t work properly (again, no surprise). The last I heard, litigation was being considered.

3) Does your consultant have business sense?

Your consultant needs to be more than just a technical wizard. He or she needs to understand basic principles of business or things will go wrong in unexpected ways.

A few years ago a new client asked me to offer an opinion on his company’s customized mass mailing application. I saw the problem immediately. There was a single name field and it wasn’t possible to search or sort on a person’s last name.

The consultant’s defense was that nobody asked her to include that “feature.” The client might have done a better job of explaining what was required but, not being experienced in writing software specifications, they depended on the consultant’s understanding of how this application would be used in the real world. They wisely passed on her offer to add the missing capability for an additional fee and found another programmer with a better understanding of how software is used in business.

4) Is your consultant prepared to share his knowledge?

You want your consultant to fix problems but you also want him to transfer some of his knowledge to you. If your consultant doesn’t want you watching over his shoulder now and then, if he doesn’t want to explain what he has done, if he prefers to keep things to himself as much as possible, then you’re not getting as much out of his time as you should.

Sometimes consultants don’t like to share knowledge or information because they aren’t good at explaining things. Sometimes they fear that explaining what they’re doing will expose their ignorance. Sometimes they keep things to themselves because they think they can make more money from you that way. The less you know, the more they can bill. It’s never a good thing when your consultant isn’t forthcoming.

5) Is your consultant withholding any passwords?

A special case of “failure to share” involves passwords. Your consultant is in possession of many administrative passwords that are absolutely necessary to manage your technology. What happens to your network if the consultant gets sick, suddenly leaves town, or simply becomes angry? The stories I know on this theme are more depressing than amusing. Think in terms of being held ransom.

Last year I was phoned by a small company (10 people) that had just fired the person responsible for managing their Windows server. Only after he left did they realize that he alone knew the administrator password. They suffered a few days of panic and inconvenience before I was able to reset the password with the help of a $300 utility I purchased on their behalf.

6) Can you reach your consultant when you need to talk to him?

Emergencies happen. Viruses strike or backups fail. Can you get through to your consultant? Are you guaranteed a same-day reply? If the answer is no, is that acceptable? Whatever emergencies you’ve had in the past, you can be sure there’s something more gut wrenching awaiting you.

Some consultants take a curious, minimalist approach to communications. For example, if you ask a question via e-mail or voicemail and they don’t know the answer, they simply don’t respond. They assume you know what a failure to reply means. There’s no problem here if you understand your consultant’s style and you can live with it. On the other hand, I know some clients who have been driven to the brink by their consultant’s inability to reply promptly to a simple question or request with a “Sorry, I don’t know” or “Sorry, I can’t today but how about Thursday?”

Most of the questions I’ve suggested revolve around communication issues. If you can establish clear and timely communication with your consultant in a language you both understand, there’s a good chance that you can have a productive, mutually beneficial relationship. If not, you’ll end up feeling like the victim in a bad comedy sketch. Over and over again.