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A business consultant (from Latin consultare, "to discuss") is a professional who provides professional or expert advice [1] or service in a particular area such as security (electronic or physical), management, accountancy, law, human resources, marketing (and public relations), financial control, engineering, science, digital transformation, exit planning or any of many other specialized fields.
An external auditor may perform a full-scope financial statement audit, a balance-sheet-only audit, an attestation of internal controls over financial reporting, or other agreed-upon external audit procedures. [6] External auditors also undertake management consulting assignments.
Consultants can be engaged proactively, without significant external enforcement, and reactively, with external pressure. [23] Proactive consultant engagement is engaged mainly with aim to find hidden weak spots and improve performance, while the reactive consultant engagement is mostly aimed at solving problems identified by external stakeholders.
External cash injections are divesting the control historically promised to partners and shaking up the culture at firms. Private equity houses have been injecting cash into mid-tier accounting firms.
Consultant auditors are external personnel contracted by the firm to perform an audit following the firm's auditing standards. This differs from the external auditor, who follows their own auditing standards. The level of independence is therefore somewhere between the internal auditor and the external auditor.
An accounting consultant may have to have an accounting designation, such as Chartered Accountant status. Some individuals become consultants after a lengthy and distinguished career as an executive or political leader or employee, so their lengthy and exposed experience may be their main asset.
Many industry groups have been used for academic research, while looking at professional services firms, making a clear definition hard to attain. Some work has been directed at better defining professional service firms (PSF). In particular, Von Nordenflycht generated a taxonomy of professional service firms, defining four types: [3]
Consulting is the activity or business of giving expert assistance on a particular subject, notably to other professionals but also to the consumer market. The following outline provides a general overview of consulting.