Selling Expertise, Delivering Inexperience: How Misrepresented Expertise Undermines Consulting Ethics

This essay examines whether the Dutch Association of Management Consultants (Ooa) expertise principle provides adequate guidance when commercial incentives lead firms to overstate team capabilities. Drawing on a jokes-based interview method with a junior IT consultant, the study presents a case in which a recent graduate was assigned sole delivery responsibility for a project that the firm’s most senior consultant had previously taken over a year to complete, while the client was promised a three-month timeline. The case is analysed through consequentialist and deontological lenses, with comparative reference to the UK Management Consultancies Association code of conduct. The analysis reveals that the Ooa expertise principle, while normatively sound, is structurally insufficient: it addresses individual conduct but cannot reach firm-level commercial decisions where misrepresentation originates. Three reforms are proposed: extending the principle to firms and partners, mandating staffing transparency, and establishing organisational voice mechanisms for junior consultants.