If your client makes all the decisions, what do they need you for?

That is the question I come back to every time I feel the pull to just go along with something.

It is a potentially uncomfortable question. Consultants - especially those early in their careers - often conflate agreement with professionalism. The client is paying for your time. They know their organisation. Pushing back feels presumptuous, maybe even rude.

"The customer is always right" - aren't they? Check out my intro post to find out what I think about that sentiment.

There is a difference between respecting a client's expertise and abdicating your own. The consultant who mostly executes what they are told will, over time, train their client to stop asking for input. Once that happens, the relationship shifts. You are no longer a trusted adviser. You are a pair of hands. Easily replaced.

To be clear; I'm not advocating for combative posturing. If you routinely reject their input I can guarantee they'll stop asking for your input too. I'm merely suggesting that you adopt a healthy portion of scepticism.

The compliance trap

The irony is that saying yes feels like good service. It feels collaborative. It avoids conflict. And in the short term, it usually does keep the client happy.

But "happy now" and "well-served" are not the same thing. A client who makes a poorly informed decision - because their consultant did not challenge it - will eventually realise that. They may not blame you explicitly. But they will stop calling you first.

The consultants who build long-term relationships are the ones clients trust to tell them something they do not want to hear.

A framework worth keeping

When I need to push back, I use a three-part structure: Evidence, Empathy, Option.

Evidence is what the data or constraints actually show. Not your opinion - the facts on the ground. This is what makes the pushback credible rather than merely opinionated.

Empathy is acknowledging why the client's instinct made sense. Their request did not come from nowhere. There is usually a legitimate concern underneath it - cost, timeline, organisational politics, a bad experience with a previous tool. Name it. Show you understand it.

Option is the alternative path. Not a vague suggestion that they should reconsider - a concrete, better-founded direction. Something they can actually choose.

I often open with: "I would like to explore this a bit further, if I may." It signals challenge without aggression. It invites rather than confronts.

In practice

Here's an example of using the Evidence-principle.

I was working on a project a while back. We were at the tail end of an 18-month development phase - UAT was imminent - when the client raised a request for an additional, fairly complex use case. Late-stage scope additions are one of the more reliable ways to derail a delivery.

I had three options. Try to squeeze it in and accept the risk. Tell them the timeline would need to move. Or challenge whether the request was as necessary as it felt in the moment.

I chose the third option. The use case had the feel of an edge case - something that had surfaced once or twice and lodged itself in someone's mind as a problem worth solving. Rather than dismissing it, I asked a simple question: "Out of roughly 30,000 supporter interactions last year, how many of them actually involved this use case?"

The data existed in their current CRM system, but pulling it would take effort. When faced with that request, the client paused - and then dropped it. The use case was not important enough to justify with evidence. It probably never was.

That is what challenging the premise can look like. Not "we cannot do this" - but "can we establish whether we should?"

The principle

Clients hire consultants for expertise, not compliance. They can make decisions themselves - they do it every day. What they cannot always do is see the full picture, weigh options they have not considered, or challenge their own assumptions with the benefit of cross-sector experience.

That is your job.

If you are mostly just doing what you are asked, you are not doing your job - you are doing their admin.

Push back. Professionally, constructively, with evidence. But push back.