The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook & Companion, 2nd Edition

Chapter 23Anonymous Interviews?: Definitely Yes and No

Neale Clapp and Liz Clapp O’Connor

Effective organizations seek trust and authenticity. In this article, Neale addresses this issue through the question of whether consultants should promise anonymity when conducting interviews. This demonstrates the belief that every step of our work with clients should model the organization we hope to create. Some of Neale’s gifts are his intellectual integrity and his willingness to question what is considered standard practice among consultants.

Since the publication of the first edition of Flawless Consulting and its wide professional acceptance, the emphasis on the process of consulting has raised our consciousness on a host of issues, ranging from requisite interpersonal skills to the sequence of each phase of consultation.

Despite this attention and growing consensus regarding good consulting practice, consulting remains an elusive art, subject to as many interpretations as there are practitioners. This article addresses one small but hardly minor aspect of today’s collected wisdom in process consulting: when to, and when not to, make your data collection anonymous.

THE APPEAL OF ANONYMITY

The notion of collecting data anonymously has obvious appeal and rationale:

• It provides the opportunity for greater candor and disclosure from the people providing the data. Anonymous sources are comfortable knowing that they can freely express unpopular controversial or judgmental points ...