At a recent lunch the Financial Times hosted for management consultants, one of them introduced us to the “spouse test”. Before you submit a proposal to a potential client, the consultant said, ask your spouse to read it. If he or she can’t make sense of it, rewrite it.

The role of spouses in telling us when we are going wrong at work is largely hidden. This is understandable; married life is private. Almost the only time we get a glimpse of what a spouse has contributed to a senior executive’s career is when the couple gets divorced.