If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

—Abraham Maslow

One of my favorite Dilbert strips depicts a meeting in which a problem is presented and each attendee suggests a solution that just happens to match his or her personal “hammer”—weighted cash flow analysis, and so on. In the final panel, a porcupine is sitting at the end of the meeting table and declares, “We must stick them with quills! It's the only way!!”

Companies hire services professionals for some combination of objectivity and subject matter expertise. The problem is, the two are somewhat at odds with each other. In fact, the more expert we are, the less objective we can be. Limited objectivity leads us to the doorstep of bias—an unconscious belief that governs our thoughts and behaviors. Subject matter expertise is the mother of all biases, and no matter how client focused we may profess to be, it can inhibit our ability to render the optimal solution for a client.

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