People like to pretend modern professional life evolved beyond primitive power structures. I do not think it did. We simply industrialized them. Wrapped them in PowerPoint, recruiting decks, utilization targets, “talent strategies,” and consulting brands.

Today was another reminder. We are implementing a new system. The consultants arrive. The product engineer running the demo starts asking foundational questions:

• “Do you need multicurrency for India?”
• “Do you need multi-level consolidations?”
• “What about revenue recognition and technical accounting?”
• “How are you handling software development costs in the project module?”

Foundational questions. Not cleanup items for phase three. Not optional polish. Get them wrong now and the business pays later. More cost. More rework. More operational drag hidden behind another future statement of work. And the consultant leading the engagement — my age, not some kid — starts pretending. Not maliciously. Systemically. Watching it feels like seeing a cheap wig stretched over gray hair. Everyone in the room knows. Especially the person wearing it.

If you do not know, say so. But the system often does not reward that. The system rewards performed certainty. Fake it until you make it industrialized into a business model.

Aside – see Steve Jobs’ parallel view on “Consulting”  https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWX5FHRjLN4/

To be fair, true experts absolutely exist. Within their domains, their counsel is priceless. The world still desperately needs them. But expertise has always had a dangerous shadow side: institutions confuse confidence, credentials, and repetition with truth.

A hundred years ago doctors prescribed leeches and bloodletting with complete professional certainty. Not because they were evil. Because the institution itself believed it. The white coat, the hierarchy, and the accepted wisdom reinforced each other until eventually reality caught up.

Professional systems still work this way more often than we admit. That is the part that gets me. Not human imperfection. Not even lack of expertise. The forced facade. Maddening like the slow-moving traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel in rush hour!

Instead I bite my tongue because I understand the game too well. Most of us inside these systems eventually do. And yes, part of the reason these systems persist is because organizations are not merely buying expertise. They are buying institutional insurance. If the project fails, leadership can still say: “The experts approved it.” That shelter has enormous economic value even when the advice itself is mediocre.

True innovators rarely have that protection. Most fail. But real progress has always depended on the minority willing to challenge accepted certainty instead of renting it.

Maybe AI dents this facade. Not because AI is wise. It is not. And not because AI cannot hallucinate or enable faux expertise. It absolutely can. In careless hands it may amplify nonsense wrapped in confidence. But AI also changes something fundamental. The customer now carries the tool too. Not a magic answer machine. A research engine. A pattern engine. A probing engine.

It has read the multicurrency examples. The consolidation structures. The revenue recognition memos. The acquisition footnotes. The implementation failures. Why in the world would we not consult it? Not to replace judgment. To interrogate claims. To pressure-test certainty. To sniff out pretending.

For centuries, expertise benefited from information scarcity. AI weakens that protection. Not perfectly. Not safely. But materially.

The truly expert will likely become even more valuable. The truly influential will likely remain influential. But the middle layers built primarily on recycled certainty and controlled access should be nervous. The customer is no longer entering the room intellectually unarmed.

And maybe that is the real shift underway. The center of gravity slowly moving away from performed expertise and back toward observable truth.