PT THE AUDITOR Consultants – There to Take the Blame?


ants?Well, I can tell you what one well-renowned consultant told me: “Consultants are there to take the blame.”


A OK, it was really a 20-minute conversation, and he spoke


eloquently about what consultants bring to the party. They bring experience and knowledge, he said. They know what questions to ask, and can help guide the answers so horrendous mistakes are avoided. They help managers put in positions without much knowledge (know anyone like that?) down paths thatwill lead to success, not failure. Then he got to the crux of the conversation. “However, in the end, many a job has been saved and many


a project rescued because in political situations – and let’s face it, any public project is a political situation – someone was there to blame when things went wrong. “Consultants need to have broad shoulders,” he said. “We


make recommendations – that often aren’t taken – and then when the project has a problem, we are there to blame, and then to fix it, if we can. Politically, we are extremely important to the process when dealing with government agencies.” Now just a gol’ darn minute here.Are you telling me that


HHH, CONSULTANTS! THE BOSS says that this is the Parking Today Consultants issue and asked me to comment.What does an auditor – and a dog to boot – know about consult-


one of the consultant’s jobs is to be blamed even when they are blameless? “We allow the political


process to work,” he said. “These folks have little experience in the details. We bring that experience. When things go right, we are in the background and the appointed or elected official gets the credit. “But when things go wrong, and they sometimes do, we are


there to take the blame.We get pilloried, we get paid, and that’s it.We live to fight another day. If we weren’t there, the political process would collapse.” But then how do you get another job if you get the blame


for problems all the time? “Everyone knows that this is how it works.Without us to


take the fall, fewpoliticianswould survive their terms.However, it isn’t always bad.We provide a very useful service,” he said. “Take amajor airport parking project that has been ongoing


for years. It has had one vendor that was deemed to have failed, another that is going to replace them, and the consulting firm involved is still there and working well. “They were smart enough in the beginning to write amemo


early on saying that failure was a possibility. It got buried, but of course they kept a copy. They were able to survive the process, assist with the changeover, and everyone was happy. “But the management at the airport, who most likely had made the errors, were able to save face, the consulting firm was right all along, were kept in the loop, and the project will eventually succeed. “Consultants walk a tight rope,” the consultant told


me. “They have to make strong recommendations. But when those recommendations aren’t followed, they need to be sure they are there and in a position to pick up the pieces. If they do it well, they can survive the process, and the customer’s staff can survive, too. “Consultants are political as well as technical.


Why, I know a consulting firm that has been sued on a number of jobs, but the lawsuits just sort of fade away, and they are hired over and over by the same organiza- tions. “It’s a very intricate dance,” he said. “But one of


our purposes, in addition to giving strong recommenda- tions and technical advice, is to give the politicians a place to go when things go bad. Some of these projects are hundreds of millions of dollars and years in length. It’s impossible, with all interests involved, many politi- cal, to have it run smoothly. Ifwe can aid in that process, then we have earned our fee, and done our job. “In the end, the customer gets a successful project,


andwe help themover the political aswell as the techni- cal aspects,” he said. I sat in a meeting the other day reviewing the bids


“I like the way you handle responsibility, Fingleworth, so I’mgoing to blame some stuff on you.”


50 NOVEMBER 2009 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


to operate a project in a major U.S. city. It was an inter- esting meeting. It took nearly four hours – three of which had to do with how to approach the bids so the project owner wouldn’t be sued.


Continued on Page 52


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