Four years ago, the governance and compliance consulting marketplace featured a radioactive mix of overburdened clients, risk-averse auditors, angry investors, and active regulators. Deloitte Consulting Principal Lee Dittmar dove into the fray, figuring that the challenges couldn't be any more difficult than nuclear physics. Schooled as an engineer before enrolling in Wharton for his executive MBA, Dittmar entered the consulting profession in the late 1970s. His first projects consisted of rescuing troubled nuclear power plants. In the 1980s, he moved on to regulatory and litigation consulting, during which he was interrogated by attorneys as an expert witness in numerous regulatory and litigation proceedings involving distressed nuclear projects.
"You needed to research the facts, interview a ton of people, find out what happened, and come up an expert opinion," he recalls. "And then you were grilled on the stand by numerous attorneys whose only role in life was to make you look like a fool."
Competitors in the compliance and governance space may have thought Dittmar courted the same risk when he held early on that the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance could be leveraged by U.S. public companies to strengthen business performance. The risk paid off, as Dittmar and Deloitte's Sarbanes-Oxley Services have been in high demand during the past three years. In April, Harvard Business Review published an article Dittmar co-authored with his Deloitte Consulting colleague Steve Wagner titled "The Unexpected Benefits of Sarbanes-Oxley."
Dittmar's recent work includes developing new frameworks and insights for compliance management, governance, and risk management. He has also championed the move to bring tax expertise into a wide range of consulting engagements.
Dittmar does not bring a CPA to bear on his compliance, governance, and risk management work, but he has plenty of experience in auditing large companies; one of the services his previous consulting firm (his own) offered was management audits of public utility companies. "When a problem is not well formed and there are more questions than answers," he says of taking on new challenges, "it really gets my juices flowing." Dittmar credits his engineering background with teaching him how to think and solve problems. "You don't have to memorize everything," he explains. "You simply have to know that there are many sources and places to go for information, data, and advice."
Continuous learning, integrity, the courage to make decisions based on available information, and the cultivation of personal relationships represent Dittmar's keys to consulting success.
"Preserving your integrity above all things is your most valuable possession at the end of the day in this business," he adds. "It guides you. There have been situations where I needed to give clients an answer that they really didn't want to hear. Sometimes that has cost us an engagement. But I have met those clients again, and all of them have said, 'Remember when you told me what you told me and I didn't want to hear it? Thank you.'”.
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