G.17Guides · Decision brief
Questions to ask before hiring a consultant
Consulting is a market where the product is invisible at purchase: you are buying future judgment, and every seller's deck looks confident. The correction available to you is interrogation. Good advisors answer hard questions with specifics and visible pleasure; weak ones answer with brochures. The questions below are ordered by how much theater they cut through.
The distinction
What is actually being compared?
Three questions expose the delivery model. Who exactly will do the work, by name, and how many hours of the named senior person does the fee actually buy? What does the engagement produce that we keep, shown as a redacted example of comparable work? And what will you need from us, in hours and data, for this to succeed? The first exposes bait-and-switch staffing, the second exposes deliverable quality, the third exposes whether they have thought about your side of the work at all.
Three more expose the thinking. What would make you tell us not to do this project? A rigorous advisor can name the evidence that would kill the engagement; a vendor cannot conceive of it. What is your current hypothesis, knowing it may be wrong? Real experts hold provisional views and say so. And where does your expertise end on this problem? The honest boundary answer predicts every honest answer you will get later.
The commercial questions
How is the fee structured, and why that structure for this work? You are listening for reasoning, not just a number: a seller who chose the structure deliberately can defend its incentives. What happens when scope assumptions turn out wrong? The answer should be a process, not reassurance. Can we exit between phases, and what do we own if we do? Anything that punishes exit is prepaying for lock-in. And who else are you working for that we should know about? Conflicts are common and survivable; concealed conflicts are neither.
The answers that should worry you
Worry when every answer is yes: real capability has edges, and a seller who fits every scope is describing their sales process, not their skill. Worry when references are offered instead of reasoning: past clients prove someone paid, not that the thinking fits your problem. Worry when the proposal arrives before the questions do: an advisor who scopes without interrogating you is planning to sell you what they already had. And worry most at pressure to sign quickly: judgment worth buying does not expire on Friday.
Side by side
Strong answers vs warning answers.
| A strong answer sounds like | A warning answer sounds like | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work? | Named people, with their hours quantified | Our senior team oversees every engagement |
| What would kill this project? | Specific evidence that would change the advice | We are confident you will be happy |
| Where does your expertise end? | A plain boundary and a referral beyond it | We handle everything end to end |
| What if your assumptions are wrong? | A written change process with shared exits | We always find a way to make it work |
| Why this fee structure? | Reasoning about incentives and risk | That is our standard rate |
The call
How to run the conversation
- 01
Ask the kill question first.
Open with what would make you advise us not to do this. It is the fastest sorting question in the market: rigor engages it, theater deflects it, and you learn which you are talking to in about 90 seconds.
- 02
Interrogate the delivery model, not the brand.
The brand does not attend your working sessions. Names, hours, artifacts, and your own required contribution are the engagement; everything else is the wrapping.
- 03
Write the answers down.
Whatever survives your questioning belongs in the agreement: the named people, the structure reasoning, the change process, the exits. An answer a seller will not put in writing was a performance, not an answer.
A note on interest. Praxis sells consulting, so treat this page as an informed party’s brief, not a referee’s ruling. The discipline we hold ourselves to is written down: category-level comparisons only, no named competitors, and a public page on when we are not the right fit.
Questions
Asked before scoping.
- Is it rude to interrogate a prospective advisor this hard?
- It is the opposite: serious advisors prefer interrogating buyers, because hard questions predict a client who will engage with the work rather than shelve it. If the questioning offends a seller, you have learned what feedback will do to the relationship later, at zero cost.
- How does Praxis answer the who-does-the-work question?
- With unusual simplicity: one principal does the work, every hour of it, which is stated plainly on the how-we-work pages along with what that model is good for and where it is the wrong fit. The same directness is the standard for every other question on this page.
Where this leads on the site
Other decision guides
- G.01Strategy vs management
- G.02Consultant vs contractor vs fractional
- G.03Boutique vs Big Four
- G.04Consultant vs in-house
- G.05Change vs transformation
- G.06Fractional vs retainer
- G.07AI consultant vs implementation partner
- G.08Data strategy vs engineering
- G.09Consulting vs coaching
- G.10Interim vs consultant
- G.11SEO consultant vs agency
- G.12Transformation vs modernization
- G.13What drives cost
- G.14Fee structures
- G.15Fixed vs T&M
- G.16First-engagement budget
- G.18Red flags
- G.19Writing an RFP
- G.20Evaluating proposals
- G.21Do you need one?
- G.22Getting the value
- G.23When to hire strategy
- G.24SEO for construction
- G.25Board vs advisory board
- G.26Marketing consultant vs agency
- G.27Piloting an advisor
- G.28AI implementation cost
- G.29Strategy vs ESG reporting
Decided what kind of help you need?
Then the next conversation is about fit and scope. Tell us what you are deciding, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right resource for it.
No obligation · a scoping conversation first