When a great idea is uncovered does it really matter who came up with it? As a Marketing and IT professional for more than twenty years I’m often amazed how much IT and marketing consultants are afraid of not having all the answers. How we cringe when asked the uncomfortable and unanswerable questions. Yet we boast about partnering and collaborating with our customers. Isn’t being openness, honesty and transparency elements of partnership? I challenge all consultants to step out of their comfort zones and declare, “We don’t always have all the answers!”

A great example of this is a client we recently worked with. We were developing a new application that was revolutionizing the client provided their product to their constituents. As we wire framed out the new concepts we found that many questions still remained unanswered. As much as we wanted to define and design it all for them our client still needed to do some of their own wire framing and discovery to reach the desired outcome. After a few days our client came back with a workable solution. One of our consultants said, “Gee what are they paying us for.” I replied that we provided the tools and framework that led them through the process and activities that enabled this discovery to occur. We could have spent endless hours (and billings) trying to come up with the idea on our own but we needed our client to answer some basic questions they were still wrestling with. It didn’t matter who came up with the solution. What mattered was we (as a team) came up with the right solution.

Too often experts are relied on to have all the answers. The danger in this is setting the stage for ignoring valid solutions. A close friend of mine has a sister who is battling brain cancer. She recently started having some new symptoms and problems. Several specialists were called in. The timing of these new symptoms coincided with a recent prescription for insomnia. When this was brought up by his sister after lengthy deliberations with the doctors, one of the specialists quickly rejected it. As my friend related the story, it was denied by this doctor on the grounds that it wasn’t his discovery. He had overlooked a simple and obvious cause. How often do experts put their egos first and dismiss ideas for all the wrong reasons – even in a case of life and death. I believe we call this politics. Needless to say his sister was correct and a more empathetic (and less ego-driven) doctor recognized the conflict and subsequent treatment.

As professionals and consultants we bring years of experiences, tools and frameworks that enable us to tackle new problems. Our ability to rely on our past efforts, learnings, and experiences help us uncover new and innovative solutions. But in order for this to occur we must create an open environment with our clients. Our clients must also nurture this relationship with realistic expectations and shared responsibility. Together we need to develop a collaborative environment that manifests the best ideas. When you are en route to discovery you don’t always have an explicitly detailed map. But you want a leader who can guide you through the jungle and won’t let his or her ego get in the way. That’s real partnership and collaboration that generates the best ideas – no matter who comes up with them.