What is a Consultant
During recent conversations it became apparent that what a consultant is, what a consultant does, and simply how to define a consultant varies greatly across industries and experts. In an effort to cut the chatter and clearly provide a definition of a consultant we logged into Google and searched the phrase “what is a consultant”?
In looking for a definition of a consultant we expected to find one clear answer, instead after scanning the search results found several answers that were partially related. Here are the top two basic results:
- adviser: an expert who gives advice (from weordnetweb.princeton.edu
- is a professional who provides advice (Wikipedia)
Reviewing these definitions it is easy to surmise that a consultant gives advice but who they give the advice to and how that relationship is structured is not clearly defined. Both definitions of consultant are very basic and curt. Both definitions also end with “advice” but begin with a different noun, “expert” and “professional”.
To combine these two definitions into one basic definition of consultant we need to evaluate the nouns. According to thefreedictionary.com expert means “A person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.” Merrian-Webster defines professional as “one that is professional; especially: one that engages in a pursuit or activity professionally”. Having defined the two nouns it is clear that they mean two separate things.
In practicality a consultant is both a professional and an expert. So our basic definition, combining the two, should read: a professional expert who gives advice. At first glance it is clear that this definition is still too basic. A consultant does not randomly give advice rather they give advice to a client or clients in exchange for some form of compensation.
Adding these additional factors on to our definition we create the following definition for a consultant:
Definition for What is a Consultant “A professional expert who gives advice to a client in exchange for compensation.”
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Nice article glad I stumbledupon it. I have bookmarked the website.