(What kind of specialties and qualities can make an excellent IT consultant? I often start consulting seminars with this question. The answer generally depends on the technical landscape of the collective I'm facing. If my audience is a group of network designers, the reply usually centers around expertise for firewalls, routers, and network transport protocols. If my audience is made up of programmers, then the center of the answer will revolve around the ability to write java programs or code in c.)