This piece draws on a letter by Teresa Allan, Founding Partner at Magnus Consulting, published in the Financial Times on 2 March. 

The Financial Times published its UK’s Leading Management Consultants guide last week, including a series of articles alongside the rankings announced last month. 

We’re proud of that recognition. But the real story in the FT coverage wasn’t the ranking, it was the industry’s growing unease about AI and what it means for consulting. 

Will AI-native firms outpace incumbents? Will junior roles disappear? Will reputation still protect margins? 

Those are surface questions. The harder one is this: are consultancies, and their clients, actually clear and aligned enough to use AI well? 

Generative AI can compress weeks of analysis into days. It changes delivery economics and raises client expectations. But it doesn’t create judgment. And it doesn’t fix weak commercial fundamentals. 

If positioning is unclear, AI won’t clarify it. If accountability is fragmented, AI won’t align it. If strategy lacks coherence, AI will simply accelerate the production of more output around the same structural problems. 

Speed without clarity creates noise, and clients can see the difference. 

As analysis becomes more accessible, substance becomes more visible. Clients can test assumptions themselves and interrogate logic in real time. The production of answers is no longer the differentiator. 

The advantage shifts to firms that design systems, embedding judgment, accountability, and commercial discipline into execution. 

The firms that will thrive won’t just adopt AI quickly. They will integrate it thoughtfully, into coherent operating models where ownership is clear and decisions are evidence-led. 

This isn’t fundamentally a technology reckoning. It’s a clarity reckoning. 

AI will reward discipline. It will expose dysfunction. And it will accelerate a shift already underway, from output as value to execution as value. 

The question isn’t whether AI will disrupt consulting. It’s whether firms, and their clients, are disciplined enough to use it well.