Dumb Consultants Make Good Consultants?

Chip Camden over at TechRepublic (one of my old haunts where I used to write tips for Windows 2000 Servers) has written a blog post where he posits that consultants can, and often do, ask stupid questions about subjects they don’t know anything about, a practice which can open up new, previously unseen potentials. The idea is that the more you know, the more constrained you are by your knowledge. Its an idea which makes experts look like tightwads, donchaknow. I’d like to expand that concept a bit by stating that associated knowledge and experience in technology in general qualifies an individual for making guesstimates about new technologies which they may not be directly or intimately familiar with. They may not know how many bits are crammed into the header, but they could possibly offer some new insight into how a new Ethernet packet could work in an existing network, even without knowing the exact mechanics of it all. Its a fascinating subject.