My specialty as a consultant is market assessment and, more specifically, competitive intelligence. My job is to gather information, piece it together into a story about the marketplace and the players in it, and then put it all into context for the client. It would be impossible to do any of this if I couldn't interpret information. The information I work with ranges from scientific and clinical data presented at conferences (where I need to be able to quickly review and identify the most important info), to investor updates. I need to be able to not just understand the information but also understand the bias of that particularly source of information, and give the resulting insights the correct level of confidence and importance.