Why my Learning Audit sometimes tells you not to hire me
Most consultancies have a secret incentive built into them.
The more work a consultant can find, the more they earn. It’s not dishonest. It’s just how the model works.
And it means that when you commission an audit, review, or health check, there’s a gentle pull towards a conclusion that ends in a nice big project. Preferably one the consultant can deliver.
I’ve built my business around resisting that pull. When I run a Learning Audit, I’m genuinely trying to work out what’s wrong, even if the honest answer is not much, or that the fix has nothing to do with me.
That sounds commercially daft. Let me explain why it isn’t.
The garage problem
You wouldn’t trust a garage that failed your car every single time you brought it in.
If every visit ended with an expensive list of repairs, you’d eventually assume they were finding faults to sell you work. The trust would evaporate, and you’d go elsewhere.
Learning consultancy has exactly the same trust problem. If an audit always concludes “yes, you need a big expensive project, and happily I can build it for you,” then it was never really an audit. It was a sales pitch in disguise.
A real audit has to be willing to reach the other conclusions too. Sometimes you’re in better shape than you thought. Sometimes the fix is small and cheap. Sometimes the right person to help is someone else entirely.
Sometimes the answer is nothing
Occasionally the honest finding at the end of an audit is that you don’t really have a problem worth spending money on.
What looks like a learning issue turns out to be something simpler. A confusing instruction. A missing link. A process that needs tidying rather than a training programme that needs rebuilding. People often aren’t underperforming because they don’t know how to do the job. They’re underperforming because the tool is clunky, the process is unclear, or nobody ever told them what good looks like.
No amount of training fixes a broken process. You just end up with well-trained people who are still frustrated.
When the answer is a simple, low-cost fix you can do yourself, I say so. You keep your budget for something that genuinely needs it. That’s a strange thing for a consultant to tell you, and it’s also the truth.
Sometimes the answer is someone else
Nearly four decades in this industry means I have a fairly full black book.
If your problem is better solved by a specialist I know and trust, I’ll make the introduction rather than pretending I’m the right fit. You get a better result. I get to be the person who pointed you in the right direction.
Sometimes I receive a referral fee for an introduction, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But I’m always upfront with you about it, and it never shapes the advice. If I point you towards someone, it’s because they’re genuinely the best fit for your problem, full stop. The moment a referral is driven by what I can earn rather than what you need, it stops being honest. So I keep it transparent, and I keep it clean.
I can afford to think this way because I’m a freelancer. No board, no shareholders, no revenue target set by someone who’s never met you. I answer to one thing: whether the advice I gave was honest and useful.
A word on agencies and outsourcing
Here’s something the industry doesn’t want you to know … a lot of agencies outsource anyway.
The impressive team in the pitch is often not the team that does your work. Much of it gets farmed out to freelancers and third parties you never meet, and you pay agency rates plus the agency margin for the privilege.
I’m completely upfront that I use trusted delivery teams to build things. The line I use with clients is that “I don’t make stuff, I make stuff happen”. The difference is that you know about it, there’s no inflated overhead, and I hand-pick the right people for your specific job rather than assigning whoever happens to be free. One of my build teams has worked with me for over ten years.
You get agency-level capability without the agency politics, the hidden margins, or the commercial agenda running quietly in the background.
Sometimes the answer is me
After all of that, sometimes the honest conclusion is yes, this is exactly the kind of problem I’m built to solve.
By that point, you can trust that conclusion, precisely because you’ve seen that I’m willing to reach the opposite one. The “yes” means more when the person saying it was genuinely prepared to say “no.”
That’s the whole philosophy in a sentence. Honesty isn’t just the decent thing to do. It’s what makes the diagnosis worth trusting in the first place.
What the audit actually is
Think of the Learning Audit as an MOT for your learning. An independent health check that tells you what’s actually going on, what needs attention, and what doesn’t.
You get my full experience, my black book, and my honest assessment, whether that leads to a project with me, a referral to someone better suited, or a simple fix you handle yourself.
The audit is normally £1,000. For bookings made in September and October 2026, it’s half price at £500 using the code NOAGENDA.
Even if the answer turns out to be “you’re fine,” you’ll walk away with certainty you didn’t have before. And certainty, when you’ve been quietly wondering whether your learning is working, is worth a great deal.
Book a free 30-minute call to discuss your needs, or book your 90 minute audit, right here: