Spot your common consulting bias

Consultants pride themselves on clear thinking, yet our minds are often fogged by the very biases we try to help clients see. Bias is the invisible fingerprint on every analysis, conversation, and slide we produce. You cannot scrub it out entirely, but you can learn to spot its mark before it distorts the story. Real consulting starts with catching yourself in the act of being human. That reflection is the first of the Consultant Café 4Cs, "Consultant", the discipline of knowing yourself.

Here are a few to watch out for and how they can show up as you consult.

1. Confirmation Bias

Context:

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information that supports what we already believe. In consulting, it’s the quiet slide shuffle that favours data proving our hypothesis while quietly ignoring anything that challenges it. Once a narrative forms, every interview, spreadsheet, and finding starts to fit the story we want to tell — even when reality disagrees.

Effect on Consulting:

Confirmation bias blinds consultants to the complexity of the problem they were hired to solve. When we search only for evidence that supports our early diagnosis, we risk missing signals that point to deeper or entirely different causes. Clients sense this. They feel unheard when their experiences or data are filtered to fit a pre-written conclusion. Over time, credibility erodes and recommendations become self-referential rather than insightful.

How to Avoid It:

Treat every working hypothesis as a question, not a verdict. Actively look for data that could disprove your assumptions. Ask, “What would I expect to see if I’m wrong?” Run “red team” reviews where a colleague challenges your reasoning from a fresh perspective. Document both confirming and disconfirming evidence side by side to force balance in your analysis. True consulting rigour lies in curiosity, not certainty.

2. Anchoring Bias

Context:

Anchoring bias is the tendency to give too much weight to the first piece of information we encounter — the “anchor” — and to use it as the reference point for all future thinking. Once that anchor is set, our minds cling to it, even when better data emerges. In consulting, this can happen the moment a client says, “Our main issue is communication,” or a colleague declares, “The problem’s in procurement.” That first framing quietly shapes every interview, analysis, and slide deck that follows.

Effect on Consulting:

Anchoring can trap consultants in narrow definitions of the problem. The initial diagnosis — often based on limited evidence — becomes the lens through which everything is interpreted. This leads to selective data gathering, confirmation of early assumptions, and solutions that address symptoms instead of causes. The result: deliverables that look polished but miss the real issue.

How to Avoid It:

Pause before you accept the client’s first framing. Collect multiple perspectives and deliberately challenge the initial story. Use structured discovery questions (“What makes you think that?”, “What else could be driving this?”) and triangulate evidence before forming conclusions. Encourage your team to treat early insights as hypotheses, not truths.

Anchors are useful for mooring ships, not for guiding thinking. Good consultants know when to lift them.

3. Overconfidence Bias

Context:

Overconfidence bias is the tendency to overestimate our knowledge, accuracy, or ability to predict outcomes. In consulting, it’s the quiet voice that says, “I’ve seen this before. I know how this goes.” You may indeed know the content, but the context has changed. New stakeholders, culture, constraints, or politics. What worked brilliantly in one organisation can flop spectacularly in another.

Effect on Consulting:

Overconfidence can short-circuit curiosity. Consultants can rush to diagnose, skipping the discovery that reveals what’s different this time. Teams can unintentionally dismiss client input or alternative perspectives because “we’ve done this before.” The result is deliverables that don’t fit the environment and deliverables that feel generic rather than tailored. It also erodes trust when confidence crosses into certainty. Clients notice when you stop listening.

How to Avoid It:

Stay grounded in inquiry. Even when you’ve seen a pattern before, ask yourself, “What’s the same, and what’s not?” Revisit your assumptions and involve people who see the system differently such as clients, peers, and end users. Use premortems (“If this fails, why might that be?”) to test whether your confidence is earned or imagined. Remember: expertise gives you a starting point, not a shortcut.

Consulting Tip: trust your instincts. Listen to them, even if your mind is saying “I’ve got this”

Great consultants don’t tone down their confidence; they anchor it in humility. Context, not content, is what separates a good answer from the right one.