Questions to Ask Consulting Partners

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   What is your practice selling most of right now?

   Partners talk about demand more naturally than about culture, and the answer tells you where the staffing will go next year. It also separates partners who are building something from those maintaining an inherited client list.

2. 2

   How has client demand changed in the last year?

   You are asking for a trend rather than a snapshot, which is harder to answer from a script. Listen for whether budgets moved between topics or simply shrank, since those two lead to very different experiences for a new joiner.

3. 3

   What are you personally spending your time on this month?

   Partner time splits between selling, client relationships, internal firm work, and actual problem solving, and the mix varies enormously. It shows you what the top of this ladder looks like day to day, which is the part recruiting materials never describe.

4. 4

   What made you stay long enough to make partner?

   Most people who join do not stay, so the reasons someone did are specific: a mentor, a client they built, a moment they were trusted early. Vague answers about loving the work usually mean the honest reason was momentum.

5. 5

   What did it cost you?

   Asked plainly and without pity, this is a question senior people are rarely given room to answer. What they name, whether it is years of travel, a relationship, or a decade of weekends, is the most concrete information you will get about the trade you would be making.

6. 6

   What does a partner do that a principal or director does not?

   The step is mostly about carrying revenue and client ownership rather than running better projects. A partner who describes it in terms of selling is being straight with you about what the last promotion actually requires.

7. 7

   How do you decide which opportunities to chase and which to let go?

   Every partner has a filter, whether it is the client's seriousness, the fit with a team they can staff, or the chance of follow on work. Hearing the filter tells you how disciplined the practice is and how often people get pulled onto proposals that go nowhere.

8. 8

   Which clients say no to you, and why?

   Losses are more informative than wins and partners remember them precisely. Price, an incumbent relationship, or a client who wanted a specialist they could not offer each say something different about where the practice is weak.

9. 9

   Have you ever turned down work you could have won?

   Ask for the example rather than the principle. A partner who can name a specific engagement they walked away from, and why, is describing a real standard. One who says it happens often but cannot name a case is describing an aspiration.

10. 10

    What do you do when the client wants a conclusion you do not believe?

    This happens constantly and every partner has a method, from reframing the question to putting the disagreement in writing. The answer is also the clearest indicator of what the firm will expect of you when you are the one holding the inconvenient number.

11. 11

    What is the firm investing in that has not paid off yet?

    Every practice has a bet that is still costing money. Knowing what it is tells you where new roles will appear, where internal politics sit, and what a candidate can volunteer for to become useful quickly.

12. 12

    Where does your practice compete with other parts of the firm?

    Overlap between practices, geographies, and newly acquired units is normal and rarely discussed with candidates. It affects who you can staff, whose budget pays for you, and whether the group you join is expanding or being absorbed.

13. 13

    What separates the juniors you remember from the ones you do not?

    Partners remember specific behaviours: someone who flagged a problem early, someone who came to a meeting with the client's actual numbers. The list is usually about judgment and reliability rather than analytical horsepower, which is worth knowing before you optimise for the wrong thing.

14. 14

    What is the most common reason a strong person does not make it past the second promotion?

    The failure point moves up the ladder as expectations shift from doing the work to running it and then to selling it. Where a partner locates the wall tells you what the real bottleneck is at this firm, which is often not the one people prepare for.

15. 15

    How does the firm behave in a slow market?

    Ask about the last downturn specifically, not the philosophy. Whether they cut quickly, held people on the bench, redeployed to internal projects, or quietly stopped promoting is the single most useful thing you can learn about the firm's character.

16. 16

    What does your practice need that it cannot hire for?

    This is a gap question dressed as a business question, and it often produces the most candid answer of the conversation. If what they name matches something you actually have, you have just found the argument for hiring you.

17. 17

    What advice do you give that people tend to ignore?

    It surfaces something they believe strongly enough to repeat, and the fact that it gets ignored means it runs against the local instinct. Ask why they think people resist it, since the answer usually describes the culture better than the advice does.

18. 18

    What would my first year look like from where you sit?

    Partners describe a first year in terms of the client work that needs doing rather than the training programme. The difference between that answer and the one recruiting gave you is exactly the gap you would be walking into.

19. 19

    What do you want to be true about this practice in three years?

    It invites a plan rather than a status report, and plans reveal priorities. A partner with a clear three year answer is someone whose team is going somewhere. A partner who has never thought about it is running a book of business, which is a different thing to join.

20. 20

    What should I be asking that I have not?

    A good closing question with a partner because they have heard hundreds of candidate questions and know which ones matter. It also hands the conversation back to them, which senior people usually take as a courtesy rather than a stall.