Sometimes asking the right question is enough

Very often I see people falling into a common trap - of trying to solve problems based on personal understanding and interpretation of the problem. Its difficult to put this thought in the right perspective but I will still try....being a consultant for most part of my career I have experienced how easy it is to sit far and away from the problem and give a rational opinion on some things.One of the reasons, I believe, a consultant can do that is because he does not have any vested interest in the success or failure of the project. There are no budgets to manage, there are no political games to be followed, there are no egos to be satisfied and there are no pink slips to be handed out. But one big trap of being a consultant is that you are expected to always provide a solution/answer to a given situation. And this is exactly what I think is not fair. Sometime even asking the right questions is enough. Many times i have seen that a  consultant looks at a situation , analyzes the possible causes, looks at available options to the problem and thats it ...he has a list of potential solutions. But I think that many times even though we do our usual checks to come to a conclusion we should let the client/customer define the solution and pick the options. Presenting the problem without mentioning the available potential solutions is very useful way of driving the customer to solve their issues.Objectively appreciating the situation and constraints is one thing and providing a solution is another. Many times in our capacity we should not really do both the things . Very often we should guide the customer to make a decision and in fact sometimes not even provide him with the answers....Make the problem so obvious to the customer that he chooses the most appropriate solution. This helps in 1) giving customer the authority and confidence that they have made a correct decision and 2 ) let them carry the ownership of the decision and its implementation. Its very easy to provide solution and then help client implement it but then what we are doing is creating / making ourselves as accountable and responsible for customers actions. As long as customer holds consultants accountable for their actions it seems fine but execution should not be a responsibility of the Consultant, in my opinion.