Big fun ! (Big surprises more often than not).

Clearly those tools need some skill to be really useful, but are really worth the time spent learning.

thanks for your comment. Well one thing I would do is to ask them for their diagnosis and their plan before allowing a consultant to change anything. Then another thing is to make sure you back up configuration files before you let them change them. But this is not an answer to your question, right? :-)

It depends, of course (see how I’m always practicing my consultant-talk? :-) One idea is to call a “status meeting” and then ask the consultant for his diagnosis of the problem. Ask them if they are sure, and let them explain how they know that they are sure. Have they ever seen a similar problem? Dig, dig, dig. Then ask them what is the plan. Ask them if they are sure it will work and what makes them sure it will work. Ask for an estimate of when the problem will be fixed. Ask them to try the solution in a test environment.

In summary, the trick is to bring the conversation away from the people (you’re good, you’re no good) to the concreteness of the problem: here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, here are our options.

Hope this helps!