It was a well-meaning and not uncommon introduction.
A very good long-standing client, a couple who had successfully built a number of businesses, asked if their daughter,
Jess, could come in for “a one-on-one chat.”
They said that at 34, Jess was thinking about a career change. She had a long-time girlfriend, someone they liked, but they were concerned she was eight years younger.
They simply wanted their eldest to share her plans and understand her options with an adviser they trusted.
It sounded like an easy discussion.
It didn’t stay easy for long.
Issue one
Twenty minutes into Jess’ ‘chat’, the conversation was far more than career options.
Jess and her partner’s plans for marriage were more advanced than her parents either knew or had mentioned. Also unmentioned were the plans to start a family.
Jess’ financial situation appeared to her as a series of tough choices.
Her younger partner wanted a wedding to remember, i.e. expensive.
Jess preferred a simpler, cheaper option.
She was keen to use their savings for their equally, if not more, expensive IVF plans for ideally one, two, or if they were very lucky, three kids over the next five or six years.
She was conscious of her age and the narrowing fertility window.
Jess also hoped to shift from physiotherapy to medicine, hopefully sports medicine, which meant going back to university full-time, possibly to a campus that would require them both to relocate.
Getting married. Planning for IVF. Changing careers. Becoming a student again.
These were all two-person decisions. And the second person wasn’t there.
The adviser recognised it mid-meeting.
The initial brief of “help our daughter with her options”, was the parents’ framing, not what was actually pressing.
The obvious recommendation wasn’t to push on and make the most of the hour.
It was to pause, acknowledge a mistake had been made not to include Jess’ partner in these discussions, gently say so, and suggest the real conversation happen when it suits them both to reconvene.
Issue two
Jess’ parents are one of the firm’s best clients. A relationship they did not want to upset.
But the moment Jess sat down, the adviser’s obligations were becoming less clear.
The adviser could claim a conflict of interest and step back, citing that she already acts for the parents.
Or she could agree to meet again with Jess and her partner, to properly understand the full picture: the individual and shared significance of what they each hoped for, and discuss the best possible forward path.
Serving the best interests of Jess and her partner might create tension with a couple the firm has advised successfully for nearly ten years.
Issue three
Jess and her partner have modest savings, limited ability to pay for advice, significant costs ahead, and potentially less earning power during the study years.
Reconciling the firm’s minimum advice fee with Jess’s current financial reality will be hard.
Jess’ parents have money, but Jess doesn’t want a cent of it.
She loves them, but where she is in her life is more about making the hard choices that will make or break the relationships she wants for the rest of her life.
It’s not about lowering fees or treating Jess as a charity case.
The advice fee is probably a fraction of a $40,000 IVF program or a wedding.
And it could be just as valuable.
Issue four
Most advisers were never seriously trained for situations like this.
Without that training, many might reach for one of the twelve standards in the Financial Planners and Advisers Code of Ethics 2019, using the Code the way a drunk uses a lamppost, more for support than illumination, excusing themselves due lack of experience, skills or knowledge.
Knowledge matters, the tax act, superannuation law, compliance requirements, how markets work.
But advisers are increasingly competing with a knowledge base they have never encountered before: Claude, Gemini, OpenAI.
These tools will handle contribution caps, retirement projections, and CGT calculations competently, cheaply, and soon.
What they won’t do is objectively sit inside someone’s hardest, most tangled life choices, IVF timelines, career reinvention, competing dreams between two people who love each other, and have the judgement to advise.
The best experiences in this profession often come after moments of poorest judgement. Self-examination is what turns a difficult meeting into a better adviser and better advice.
What looked like a lost hour, a favour for good clients, quickly became something else.
A client who needed real advice, hard advice, with real complexity, whose best possible life together was genuinely on the line.
What are the consequences for Jess of not getting the best possible advice?
Jim