Choosing a consultant: five questions that reveal the answer

Consultancy proposals look alike. They claim experience, list logos and quote a success rate that nobody audits. Here are five questions whose answers are hard to manufacture — including for us, which is the point of publishing them.

1. Will you audit us as well?

The answer must be no. A body that certifies the system it built is prohibited by accreditation rules, and an organisation offering both is either misunderstanding the rules or expecting you to. Ask it first; it settles a great deal.

2. Who will actually be on site, and what have they audited?

Proposals are written by principals and delivered by juniors. Ask for the name of the consultant who will do the work, their sector experience, and whether they have audited in your industry rather than only consulted in it. Somebody who has sat on the other side of the table asks better questions and wastes less of your time.

3. What documentation will you write, and what will we write?

A consultancy that writes everything leaves you with a system nobody in the building recognises, which fails at the first surveillance audit after they leave. A consultancy that writes nothing has sold you a checklist. The honest answer is a split: they draft the structural documents, your people write the ones describing work they do.

4. What happens between certification and the first surveillance audit?

This is where most engagements quietly end and most systems quietly fail. Ask what the contract covers after the certificate arrives. If the answer is nothing, price that in — you will need internal auditors who can run the programme themselves, and that capability has to be built before the consultant leaves.

5. What will you tell us we do not want to hear?

A consultant who has never delivered bad news to a client has not been doing the job. The useful answer names something specific: a scope that is too wide for the budget, a timeline that assumes people will be released who will not be, a standard the buyer asked for that is not the one they actually need.

One more, for the certification body

Ask for audit days rather than a price. Days are comparable between quotes; prices are not. A quote well below the others usually has fewer days in it, and fewer days means a shorter audit, which sounds like a saving until the surveillance audit finds what the initial one did not.