Accountability sinks

Interesting. Wonder sometimes how much of consulting business is motivated by accountability avoidance - "accountability sinks" for hire

I don’t know how much it works with consulting because someone has to approve paying them. If they do a bad job you can blame whoever brought them in. It does make it easier to do something you were going to do anyways though.

Consultant here: A lot of it.

Ideally, a consultant is hired for their specialist skills, rare experience, sage advice on niche topics, etc...

In practice, about half the work I do is to act as a lightning rod so that the guy with the power to sign the cheque for my time doesn't get fired if things go sideways. Instead, they can just blame me, shrug their shoulders, and hire another consultant.

I've had a customer where I got "fired" for an "error". My coworker replaced me. Then he was fired, and I replaced him. We alternated like this for years. Upper management just saw the "bad" consultants get fired for their incompetence, they never noticed that we were the same two guys over and over.