Industry · Consulting
Independently administered upward reviews, 360s and engagement surveys for US consulting firms, where most firms already collect feedback at the end of every engagement and the upward half of it is the part nobody trusts.
The asymmetry is the same one. A consultant assessing the partner who staffs them is assessing the person who decides which engagements they join, what their utilization looks like and whether they are put forward. The legal instrument was built for exactly that relationship, with associates and the partners who allocate matters.
Admission to the partnership and the compensation that follows are decided by other partners, so an upward review reaches the decisions a reviewee cares about most. Up-or-out progression does the rest: when the consequence of being identified is a slower path or none at all, the rational answer to a question about your partner is a careful one.
What makes the argument specific to consulting is that most firms already run feedback at the end of every engagement. The downward half works. The upward half is collected and administered by the firm, which is why its results cluster high and move very little between cycles.
The method holds. The design around it does not transfer untouched, and these are the four things we would expect to change.
Consulting firms already collect feedback when an engagement closes, and people answer it because the work is still fresh. An upward review introduced as a separate annual exercise competes with that habit and loses. The program is designed to run on the rhythm the firm already has.
A consultant may work with eight or ten partners in a year, where an associate might work with three. Larger pools per reviewee mean more cuts clear the reporting threshold, so individual partner reporting is available at firm sizes where a law firm could not support it.
Where a staffing function allocates people, work allocation is not purely the partner's gift. The instrument separates the partner who supervised the work from the partner who staffed it, because conflating them produces a score nobody can act on.
A firm that already surveys after every engagement does not need persuading to measure. What it needs is a reason to believe the upward results, and that reason is custody of the responses sitting outside the firm.
Thirty-five years of designing and administering confidential review programs, and more than 100,000 confidential responses collected. All of it in US law firms. The method carries over: independent custody, thresholds set before fielding, comment review for identifiability, and certified handling.
The benchmark does not carry over. A consulting firm compared against law firm norms would be reading a number that looks like context and is not. A first consulting client gets its own baseline and, from the second cycle, year-on-year movement. Comparative benchmarking becomes available once there is a cohort to compare against.
If market comparison is the main thing you are buying, we are not the right choice in this sector yet.
Each of these runs as it does for a law firm client, with the instrument rebuilt against your competencies and the calendar planned around your deadlines.
This part does not vary by sector. It is the reason participation holds and the reason the findings are worth acting on.
Response data never enters your firm's systems in an identifying way. SRA holds and processes it as an independent party, under a data processing agreement in which your firm remains the controller.
The reporting threshold is set for your firm before the cycle opens, against the size of each population being surveyed. Below it, a cut is reported in aggregate or withheld entirely rather than estimated.
Free-text responses are reviewed for identifiability, so no one can be recognized by role, matter or phrasing.
ISO 27001 certified. SOC 2 Type I available under NDA. GDPR Article 28 and CCPA aligned, with SRA as processor and your firm as controller.
Disclosure required by law. SRA does not identify a respondent to your firm. Identity is disclosed only where the law requires it. Where the law permits, SRA gives notice before disclosing, and discloses only what is legally required.