Most consultants walk into a first meeting ready to pitch. The best ones walk in ready to listen. The problem stated in that first conversation is rarely the real problem; it is the symptom the client is comfortable naming, the surface issue that feels safe to put on the table before trust is established.
Joseph B. Diehl, Managing Director of Diehl & Co. LLC, certified public accountant (CPA), attorney, and functional medicine certified health coach, has spent five decades serving as chief financial officer (CFO), executive director, and interim chief executive officer (CEO) across organizations that needed someone to find what was actually wrong, not simply what was being described. “The real problem is rarely the one that’s stated out loud in the first meeting,” Diehl states. “If you can’t diagnose it in the first conversation, you likely cannot solve it in the engagement that follows.”
Ask What Is Broken, Then Keep Asking Why
Clients lead with symptoms. The software is broken, staffing is short, or the budget is off. Each of these statements is true and insufficient. A staffing problem is frequently a leadership problem. A software problem is typically a process problem that the software is now surfacing. Treating the symptom produces a temporary result at best and an expensive distraction at worst.
Diehl’s approach is to ask what is broken, then keep asking for enough detail to move beyond the surface description and reach the root cause. That is not a blame exercise; it is a diagnostic one. The distinction matters because clients will close down if the conversation starts to feel like an interrogation or an accountability hearing. The goal is clarity about what is actually driving the problem, which requires enough patience and enough specific questions to get past the first several answers a client is prepared to give.
Listen for What Is Not Being Said
After five decades of first conversations, Diehl has learned to pay as much attention to what is absent as to what is present. Executives rarely volunteer the most important information upfront, sometimes because they are protecting something, sometimes because they genuinely do not know what the real issue is, and sometimes because organizational dynamics have made certain topics difficult to surface directly. “I listen for those pauses, what gets skipped, who’s missing from the room,” Diehl reflects.
The gaps and the topics that get redirected are data. The essential staff who couldn’t attend the meeting are data too. Reading between the lines is a skill built through repetition and through the deliberate practice of empathy: attempting to understand what the client is experiencing rather than simply cataloguing what they are saying. That combination of specific questioning and attentive listening is what separates a diagnostic conversation from a sales conversation dressed up to look like one.
Getting the Diagnosis Right Changes Everything
Diagnosing well means being honest about what the client actually needs, not what is most convenient for the consultant to provide. Sometimes the right answer is a referral, stepping into an interim role to run operations while a permanent fix is designed and executed, or helping the client run a proper hiring process. The diagnosis determines the intervention, and an honest diagnosis occasionally points away from the engagement the consultant came in hoping to close.
The lesson Diehl carried from training as a functional medicine coach applies directly: pharmaceuticals rarely solve a health problem; they manage symptoms while often creating new ones. The same logic holds in business. Finding the root cause and applying the right tool to it produces durable results. Applying a standard solution to a misdiagnosed problem produces the business equivalent of side effects. Getting the diagnosis right in the first conversation makes everything that follows simpler, faster, and far more effective.
Follow Joseph B. Diehl on LinkedIn or visit Diehl & Co. LLC for more insights on problem diagnosis, executive advisory, and building the client relationships that produce lasting results.
