Squeeze that consultant until the pip squeaks

Personally, writes Sue Grossey, I blame the boom in management consultancy in the 1990s: whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I tie myself in all kinds of knots to explain my work without using the word “consultant”.Although in essence I am here for people to consult about how to implement effective and compliant anti-money laundering regimes, I feel embarrassed and even ashamed to call myself a consultant. So just what is this beast called a consultant? The Oxford English Dictionary proclaims the consultant to be “a person who provides expert advice professionally”. Oh no: there’s that other overused and devalued word – expert – so we’re no better off. American newsreader Eric Sevaraid had a simpler definition: “Consultant: any ordinary guy more than fifty miles from home”. (As I have only one client in my home town of Cambridge and all the others are at least fifty miles away, perhaps he had a point.)