We know credentials don't guarantee correctness. Yet we still listen to the white coat over the person sitting next to us. Why?
Partly, because we're lazy.
Evaluating ideas on merit takes effort. We have to think critically, weigh evidence and ask hard questions. We might discover the idea is crap. Trusting a credential on the other hand is effortless. The person has letters after their name. They work for a prestigious firm. Job done.
There's also a bias at play.
We're wired to defer to authority figures. It's an evolutionary thing. Following the person who looked like they knew what they were doing kept the tigers away and us alive. That instinct doesn't switch off just because we're in a conference room.
But there's also a deeper problem.
We're not even looking for consultants to challenge us. We're looking for ones to validate what we've already decided. Subconsciously or not. After reading just one misplaced article on accessibility or a dozen.
You think you need an accessibility overlay. So you hire a consultant who specialises in overlays. It should come as no surprise when they tell you that overlays are exactly what you need.
You think testing with user with disabilities is expensive and unnecessary. So you find a consultant who agrees.
We don't hire consultants to think differently. We hire them to think the way we want to think. The white coat just makes it official. They're just someone who rubber-stamped our solution.
And after you've hired them comes the biggest problem of all.
The sunken-cost fallacy.
You've paid this consultant a fortune. Thousands. Tens of thousands. You've spent that money. It's gone. But psychologically, it doesn't feel like it is. It feels like an investment that needs to pay off. Sooner rather than later. So you listen harder to the consultant's recommendations because you need to justify the expense.
Someone already on your team says the same thing for free and you ignore them. The consultant says it after you've paid them and suddenly it's gospel.
It's not rational. But it's predictable. We've invested in the white coat, so the white coat must be right. They have to be right! We can't afford for them to be wrong!
That's the real problem.