The need for greater sustainability is driving many conversations between professional services firms and their clients, but just talking won\u2019t be enough. <\/p>\n
Professional services firms were never meant to be high-profile. First appearing almost a hundred years ago, in response to regulatory changes in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash, the primary purpose of these firms was to advise. Working with senior leaders, they were sounding boards, not executive boards; their mission was to make their clients look better, not themselves. Time and technology have changed that: These firms are now among some of the biggest organisations in the world and have some of the most iconic brands; they regularly top lists of the best places to work. Visibility and responsibility are closely linked. Professional services firms don\u2019t just whisper in their clients\u2019 ears or position themselves behind the powerful thrones. They\u2019ve increasingly taken over responsibility for delivering much of what client organisations used to do for themselves. And, our research shows, they are likely to do so even more in the future\u2014around 41% of clients think their organisations will outsource more work in the next one to two years. Fiercer regulation in some professional fields and larger projects in almost all have exacerbated this: Look at the media attention focus on audit failures, McKinsey\u2019s $547m settlement to settle opioid claims, and so on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[205,206],"tags":[148],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14731,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions\/14731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sourceglobalresearch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}