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Comment by looping__lui | Hacker News Reader

McKinsey and BCG do not audit companies. They are consultancies and do not certify accounts to be “correct and legit”. Think of auditing companies a little bit like of vehicle inspection shops certifying your car is safe for the road.

Consultancies are not doing that.

I’m not sure why certain businesses should be “banned” because YOU believe they do not add value. Do you pay them? No.

It’s not correct that they are proxies for decision making that mangers don’t want to be responsible for. Neither McK nor BCG could run at the scale they do for five decades if that was the case.

But I suppose that was just your happy Sunday rant of the day to let off some steam.

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> I’m not sure why certain businesses should be “banned” because YOU believe they do not add value. Do you pay them? No.

Yes, whenever they are hired by the public sector. http://recreation.gov is one example in the US I know about.

So the public sector should not hire private contractors in general. State it like that then.

How is a mismanagement of consultants by public sector entities a justification to “ban” an entire sector?

Well the least they can do is force band auditing companies from offering consulting services because that is a clear conflict of interest..

That I do agree with.

BCG and McK don’t offer auditing.

I was objecting to "you don't pay them" specifically.

With governments having like 30-50% GDP share of the economy (e.g., tax versus GDP) - we are gonna have a hard time banning literally everything based on that…

We should probably ban the "no skin in the game part" instead of just the sector. Even though there have been a few court cases, the effect was tiny and they are still considered reputable. In some cases probably more personal lawsuits should be done more often (also for politicians and civil servants)

I don't get it. Do you think auditors and consultants that screw up on their job should be prosecuted?

Depends on the nature of the screw up and on how high up the hierarchy they are.

At a sufficient level of negligence and authority -- yes.

That was Booz Allen Hamilton, they are a government subcontractor that largely provides long-term staff augmentation... totally different type of professional services than strategy consultants or even system integrator (SI) shops like Accenture and Deloitte.

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