Published at https://bankar.me/clanci/kada-kompanije-traze-potvrdu-za-ono-sto-vec-znaju/
Over the past few weeks, I have spoken almost daily with a friend who holds a senior management position in a large company.
For months, she and her team worked intensively on a complex business reorganisation and cost optimisation project. Every analysis was detailed and fully documented, the proposals were precisely structured, and the final report was submitted to management within the agreed deadline.
Management’s response? They hired an external consulting firm.
Several weeks later, an extensive consulting report arrived. Its conclusions were almost entirely identical to those her team had already presented. As we discussed whether such a decision reflected a lack of trust, or even a reason to be concerned about her own position, I remembered a similar situation I had experienced several years earlier.
After conducting a detailed internal analysis of a complex business issue, I prepared a concise report containing specific recommendations. The company then hired a renowned consulting firm to provide an additional assessment.
Their report was several times longer than mine. The first nineteen pages consisted of methodology, limitations of liability, process descriptions, and standard legal disclaimers designed to protect the consultants from risk. The substance of the analysis was contained in the final three pages—and it was identical to my report.
At that moment, I asked myself a question that has remained with me throughout my corporate career: why do companies so often pay for external confirmation of what their own people already know?
At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. Companies seek independent and objective advice because leading consulting firms bring a broader perspective, external methodologies, and experience gained across different markets and industries. At certain strategic moments, that perspective can be invaluable.
In practice, however, such decisions often conceal another, less openly acknowledged motive.
What is being sought is not necessarily new knowledge, but psychological and procedural reassurance. The more strategically important the decision, the higher the stakes and the more serious the potential consequences, the stronger management’s need for external validation becomes.
What management often wants is an authoritative brand and a respected reputation to stand behind conclusions that have already been reached internally.
This is not necessarily a question of whether the company’s own experts are competent. It is often a question of risk management, because relatively few individuals in the corporate decision-making chain are willing to bear full responsibility if events move in the wrong direction.
The only difference is that, in the business world, this form of institutional alibi can cost tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of euros.
Managers should therefore avoid interpreting such decisions too personally. Sending an internal report for external validation does not automatically imply doubt about an individual’s expertise. More often, it represents a systemic mechanism through which an organisation attempts to reduce its own perception of risk before making a significant decision.
Perhaps that is why the greatest cost of these decisions is often not the consulting fee.
The real cost is much more difficult to measure. It does not appear in the income statement or in cost reports. It appears when employees stop proposing ideas with the same energy, when they become more cautious about expressing professional opinions, or when they conclude that, regardless of the quality of their analysis, the final word will always belong to someone outside the organisation.
Companies rarely notice the exact moment when this happens, but they may feel the consequences for years.
No company can acquire institutional knowledge as quickly as it can lose it.
There is, however, another side to this corporate practice. When management regularly seeks external confirmation of the views expressed by its own experts, it unintentionally sends a dangerous message throughout the organisation: internal knowledge has no real authority until it has been validated from outside.
In human resources management, it has long been understood that top professionals do not lose motivation primarily because of salary levels. They lose motivation when they realise that their professional judgement is being diminished or disregarded.
Among the most sensitive HR issues are situations in which employees gradually see their influence reduced, their responsibilities discreetly removed, or their participation in decisions from which they were previously trusted to lead formally restricted.
People interpret such signals with remarkable accuracy. They immediately recognise them as indications that their competence is being questioned.
Although seeking an external opinion is not the same as taking responsibility away from an employee, the two phenomena share the same psychological core. In both situations, the in-house expert asks the same question:
“Does this organisation truly trust my professional integrity?”
When external validation is used occasionally and for clearly defined strategic purposes, it can be a sign of mature and responsible decision-making.
When it becomes an operational rule, however, the organisation risks losing something far more valuable than money: the initiative, confidence, and intellectual capital of its own people.
The best employees do not always leave because of financial conditions or formal titles. They leave when they feel that their views carry no real weight in the decision-making process.
Companies that permanently lose the ability to trust their own people sooner or later become dependent on external opinion.
In the long term, that may be the greatest cost an organisation ever has to pay.
Photo by Alexander Kaufmann on Unsplash
