A clever way business can keep their IT support honest and productive is to introduce some healthy competition.

This can be between the in-house IT support and consultants, or between groups of consultants. The idea is that any stupid idea will become apparent quickly when you don't have too many "yes men" around.

By introducing competition, a company can take advantage of all the best ideas of everybody, and ensure that people don't become complacent.

Of course, any contractor or employee will come up with all sorts of excuses to why competition  is bad - but that's BS. They're just trying to protect their job or contract. Any decent practitioner will be fine with competition, as long as it's fair and the products and services are judged on their merits.

If you find your employee or contractor is vehemently opposed to competition - then you need to get rid of them. Their work is shoddy and they don't want to get caught.