Only later that evening did the firm announce that the 54-year-old Rhodes Scholar had finished a nose ahead of McKinsey’s sunny digital practice chief Rodney Zemmel, who had taken the election all the way to a run-off. Attention now turns to how Sternfels will respond to complaints that he has concentrated decision-making in too few hands and has run McKinsey more like a corporation than the collegial partnership of old.

McKinsey has grown to more than 45,000 employees in 65 countries, a two-thirds increase in headcount in the past decade. It has doubled revenue to $16bn over the same time. Old decision-making arrangements are no longer fit for purpose, some say.

One person familiar with the internal dynamics complained that things that would be normal practice in most companies seemed at McKinsey to spark anguish over whether the firm was being true to its values.

Recently departed senior partners described a “soul-searching” mood that explained Sternfels’ unexpectedly tough re-election battle.

“There is perhaps a feeling that there is not enough focus on the second part of McKinsey’s mission, which is ‘to help our clients make distinctive, lasting and substantial improvements in their performance and to build a great firm that attracts, develops, excites and retains exceptional people’,” one said.

The dual mission statement hints at how internal McKinsey debates are often cast as a choice between growth and values, even if managing partners inevitably claim to be balancing the two.

“Consultants want to make money and therefore need to grow, but at the same time they are supposed to be collegial and non-hierarchical,” he said. “That becomes increasingly hard as the firm grows.”