The Curiosity Paradigm: Why The Best Consultants Don’t Know Everything

(Part 3 of 5 of the series The Human Code of ERP)

When you first start your career in enterprise software, the system looks terrifying.

You log into Infor LN for the first time, stare at the endless menus, hundreds of sessions, infinite parameter configurations, and you feel an overwhelming pressure to memorize everything.

The Pressure to Know It All

I remember my early days as a junior consultant. I used to carry around a massive notebook where I wrote down every single session code and table name I encountered. I genuinely believed that my value as a professional was directly proportional to how much of the software I had crammed into my head.

If a client asked a question and I didn’t know the exact flag to tick right away, I felt like I wasn’t enough for the role. I thought the ideal consultant was a walking, talking 10,000-page software manual.

It took me years, and a few painful project mistakes, to realize a fundamental truth of this industry: Memory makes you a decent software operator. Curiosity makes you a great consultant.

In the era of Cloud computing, where software updates are pushed continuously and interfaces change overnight, relying solely on your memory is a losing game. The parameters will change. The sessions will be renamed. But the underlying business problems? Those remain complex, messy, and deeply human.

The Encyclopedia vs. The Explorer

There are generally two types of consultants you will meet in the everyday reality of an ERP implementation.

The first is The Encyclopedia. This consultant knows every hidden menu and every obscure shortcut. When a client presents a problem, The Encyclopedia instantly maps it to a standard software feature they memorized years ago.

They are incredibly fast, but they have a fatal flaw: they force every unique business problem into the pre-packaged boxes they already know. If the problem doesn’t fit the box, they declare it impossible or out of standard.

The second is The Explorer. This consultant might not remember the exact session code to configure a specific warehouse routing on the spot. But when the client presents a problem, The Explorer doesn’t immediately think about the software.

Instead, they focus on the people and the process. They start asking questions. They want to know why the physical goods move that way, who carries the burden of signing that document, and how the team reacts if the supplier is late.

The Encyclopedia stops at the first technical answer. The Explorer takes the time to truly empathize with the business pain until they find the root cause, and then they open the software to find the most effective way to help.

Clients don’t pay us just to read the user manual back to them. They pay us to untangle their daily operational struggles. And you cannot solve a human struggle you haven’t fully listened to and understood.

The “I Don’t Know” Superpower

Many consultants are terrified of uttering three simple words in front of a client: I don’t know.

We are brought in as the experts most of the time, so admitting ignorance feels like a failure. But masking your lack of knowledge with a wall of complicated words or guessing a solution on the spot is the fastest way to destroy your credibility.

The most powerful phrase you can use in a workshop is: “I don’t have the answer to that right now, but let me dig into the system and I will come back to you with the best possible solution.”

This response does three things:

1. It proves your honesty (which builds trust).
2. It validates the complexity of the client’s problem (making them feel heard).
3. It gives you the time to be curious, test scenarios, and actually design a robust solution rather than a hasty patch.

3 Habits of Highly Curious Consultants

If you want to transition from being a software operator to a true business consultant, you must actively train your curiosity. Here is a playbook to cultivate the most underrated skill in our industry:

1. Ask the Stupid Questions

Never assume you know how a company works just because they operate in an industry you have seen before. A manufacturing plant in Germany does not operate exactly like a manufacturing plant in Poland, even if they make the exact same product. Strip away your assumptions and ask the fundamental, child-like questions. Why does this box go here before shipping? Who actually reads this printed report?

The most profound process improvements often hide behind the most basic questions.

2. Follow the Physical Product

You cannot understand a business just by looking at a monitor in a meeting room. Get up. Ask for a walk on the shop floor. Follow the raw material from the moment it enters the receiving dock until it leaves on a truck. When you connect the digital data in the ERP to the physical sweat and movement of the factory, your configuration choices will become infinitely better.

3. Fall in Love with the “Why”

Whenever a key user asks you to configure a specific feature, pause before you just nod and write it down. Try to put yourself in their shoes. Keep gently asking “Why” until you uncover the real, everyday frustration driving that request. Act as a true partner who actively listens and genuinely makes their daily work life easier.

My Final Take

The software is just a tool. It is a very complex, very expensive tool, but a tool nonetheless.

You can always look up a parameter on the knowledge base. You can always ask a Technical Consultant for help with an integration. But there’s no software manual that can teach you how to care about the clients’ business.

Cultivate your curiosity. Dare to be the one who asks the extra question.

Because the day you stop being curious about how businesses work is the day you stop being a consultant and become just another user manual.

And in an era where AI can already answer technical questions by instantly analyzing documentation, being a slower, human version of a manual is a battle you will inevitably lose.

Next up: How to manage the dangerous gap between what the Executive Board bought and what the Shop Floor actually needs. We will dive into The Executive Illusion.

Written by Andrea Guaccio 

May 14, 2026