Editor's Note: The Fight for Independence

In this issue, as we looked to identify those captains of industry who once toiled inside the consulting profession, we could not help but be struck by the fact that the two executives of any origin who had received the lion's share of press clippings over the past 30 days were both former consultants.
The headlines above the photos told very different stories, however. While the outgoing CEO of IBM, Lou Gerstner, received nothing but praise for having achieved one of industry's most remarkable turnarounds, Jeff Skilling, the embattled former CEO of Enron, received 50 lashes as pundits and journalists sought to untangle the single largest business failure ever.
Two diametric tales, but two seemingly similar personalities.
Both men rose through the ranks to become senior partners at McKinsey & Company. Theirs was an up-or-out culture, in which both consultants ascended with distinction. This was a clear indication not just of their various aptitudes, but also of their acceptance of McKinsey's hallowed principles, one of which — the dictum of independence — is now arguably at the center of Enron's collapse.
"Brilliant," "arrogant," and "aloof" are the common modifiers that often seem to stick to both men as journalists seek to uncover the "smoking gun" quality that contributed to one man's ascension and the other's spectacular fall.
The way one of these executives addressed his company's problems was "to play every financial card in his hand," wrote Fortune magazine. "This kind of aggressive bookkeeping was widely criticized," the magazine contended. Comments such as these may have been just what the Enron congressional hearings were hoping to scrutinize more closely — that is, of course, if they were made in relation to Skilling.
But Fortune's words were in comment about Gerstner.
If there's a fine line between brilliance and insanity, there's another arguably more feeble one between Skilling and Gerstner. It's a line that speaks to the consulting profession's split personality — one that seperates objective outsiders from consumate insiders.
The collapse of Enron is without question the final chapter of one of the consulting industry's most robust eras — the rise of the accounting/consulting firm.