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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

> The consultant is being paid by management. S/he is beholden to them.

Quite the opposite. One of the reasons people go into consulting (and I don't mean working for a consulting company), is precisely because they're not beholden to them. They have much more freedom to set the terms than employees do.

If a company wants them to reveal the individual, they'll be happy to give them the middle finger and let them know their morals are lacking.

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The point remains that the messenger may deliver a message that invites retaliation, and even if their plan is to protect their sources, they may fail to do so.

Someone who thinks they will protect you may be as big of a wildcard as someone who demonstrates clearly that they won't, because you haven't given anything really damning to the latter.

Usually, everyone knows. It's just that they need to hear it from somebody else (or will ignore it intentionally and did so up until this point).

Intentionally ignored for political reasons, so hiring the consultant allows them to address it minus the political fallout.

Most large companies hire large consulting firms, whose lack of morals is a selling point.

Oh, consultants from large consulting firms are a completely different thing. People upthread are not talking about those at all.

I can confirm that. I've had more than one opportunity to tell some C-level manager that asking me who said what was making them part of the problem, not the solution. It is quite an effective way to initiate reflection (whatever you think, most managers are not sociopathic morons, they just have different incentives than you).

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