Journal of Financial Planning: January 2024
Armahn Hadjian, CFP®, CIMA, is a wealth adviser in Kansas City, Missouri. He has over seven years of industry experience and currently serves clients by providing comprehensive financial planning and investment management. Armahn is currently pursuing his master’s degree in personal financial planning through Kansas State University. He also serves as the program director and instructor for Kansas State University’s Personal Financial Planning Undergraduate program at the Olathe, Kansas, campus.
Megan McCoy, Ph.D., LMFT, AFC, CFT-I, is an assistant professor at Kansas State University’s personal financial planning program. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an Accredited Financial Counselor, and a Certified Financial Therapist-I. She volunteers on the Financial Therapy Association’s Board of Directors and is the co-editor of Financial Planning Review.
Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D., is a writer and senior research associate with Kitces.com, a financial planning blog. Dr. Lurtz is also a professor of practice at Kansas State University, where she teaches courses for the Advanced Financial Planning Certificate Program and financial therapy, and a lecturer at Columbia University where she teaches financial psychology, and an undergraduate adjunct professor through the University of Maryland system in their CFP® certificate program. She is a past president of the Financial Therapy Association and the learning and development officer at Shaping Wealth. She currently serves on multiple boards for financial technology companies bringing together finances and mental health.
Effective financial planning often creates situations in which clients share personal information with their planners about family dynamics, goals, aspirations, and closely held beliefs about money (McCoy et al. 2022). Sometimes, conversations can veer into terrains that might be more aptly compared to a counseling session than a financial planning meeting (Klontz, Zutphen, and Fries 2016). The CFP Board has embraced the need for counseling-like skills within the financial planning industry by introducing client psychology to the CFP® certification education and exam requirements (Watkins et al. 2023). However, the addition of counseling-like skills creates the need for more rigorous looks into evidenced-based practices and potential ethical conundrums that could arise (Kahler 2022), with a particular interest in the role of self-disclosure.
Within the counseling field, there has been significant research regarding evidence-based practices and ethical considerations around the role of self-disclosure when working with clients (e.g., Arroll and Allen 2015). Self-disclosure can be defined as the process of sharing personal information about oneself (Barnett 2011). Self-disclosures can range from the superficial, such as a favorite restaurant or vacation spot, to deeply personal information, such as religious beliefs or a loved one’s gender identity. Self-disclosure can be intentional, sharing parts of one’s life or preferences with clients in conversations. Self-disclosure may also be unintentional, such as wearing a religious symbol as a necklace or having a picture of a family displayed in the office (Barnett 2011; Zur, Williams, Lehavot, and Knapp 2009).
The subject of self-disclosure requires delicacy. When approached with care, it can foster trust and commitment in our clients. However, if self-disclosures are unwise, inappropriate, or untimely, the consequences can be detrimental, undermining the positive effects mentioned earlier (Wasil, Venturo-Conerly, Shingleton, and Weisz 2019). To the authors’ knowledge, no research has been completed regarding self-disclosure by financial planners when working with their clients. This article aims to provide a review of the use of self-disclosure in other helping professions to guide future empirical research on best practices for financial planners around self-disclosure. The secondary hope is that this article will heighten awareness and insights for practitioners on using self-disclosures to lead to better outcomes for clients.
Types of Self-Disclosure
Historically, self-disclosures have been identified as verbal or non-verbal, deliberate or accidental (Zur 2009), and more recently, internet self-disclosure (Luo and Hancock 2020). A verbal self-disclosure would be anything a practitioner would tell the client about themselves. This might include sharing one’s marital status, whether they have children, where they live, what schools their children attend, their alma mater, their religious affiliation, their political beliefs, their age, sexual orientation, or any other personal facts about the practitioner. Some financial professionals regularly self-disclose as a part of their marketing (Wershing 2019). For example, an adviser may include in marketing materials that there is a specific client type they serve (e.g., dentists, widows, LGBTQIA+, entrepreneurs). Consumers can sort advisers on some financial planning professional platforms by these disclosures. Niching for financial planners may even be linked to an adviser’s overall well-being —when advisers cannot be themselves at work, they have lower well-being (Inveen and Kitces 2021).
Non-verbal self-disclosure involves conveying personal information that can happen in the natural course of therapy (Zur 2009). Examples could be the practitioner wearing a lapel pin from their alma mater, wearing a cross or Star of David on a necklace, wearing a wedding ring, or even just having a picture of their family on their desk. While the practitioner is not verbally self-disclosing, the client is certainly able to make inferences about the practitioner based on the object and what is perceived to have been disclosed.
The next type of self-disclosure, accidental, can sometimes be the hardest to avoid. This type of self-disclosure can involve unintentionally signaling an opinion or thought to the client via facial expressions or other types of non-verbal cues or reactions (Barnett 2011). For example, if a client is disclosing something about their political beliefs, and the practitioner disagrees, they might slightly roll their eyes, raise their eyebrows, or somehow indicate that they disagree with the client (Barnett 2011). This may inadvertently signal to the client that the planner’s political beliefs differ from their own, which may cause them to no longer feel comfortable being completely transparent and honest in the engagement. Much of therapy is about building trust and a safe space for the client to disclose. In accidentally self-disclosing, the practitioner creates the potential to destroy that safe space. Thus, careful consideration must take place to prepare for a range of potential self-disclosures by the client, such that the practitioner is not caught off guard and reacts in an unfavorable manner concerning therapy. It is debatable as to whether these types of self-disclosures are truly accidental, or in some cases fall into the unavoidable category. For purposes of our discussion here, it is in our opinion less important to perfectly categorize each type of self-disclosure as being deliberate, unavoidable, or accidental, and more important to think pragmatically about specific situations where self-disclosure can and does occur, and whether or not the net impact of those self-disclosures is positive or negative for the client.
Recently, an additional category of self-disclosure has been gaining recognition in research: internet self-disclosure (Luo and Hancock 2020). Internet self-disclosure includes social media posts, articles, and information that might come up in a web browser search. Many of the social media/networking platforms are available for the general public to view, though settings on each platform can be modified to make them more private if one chooses. However, each and every post, no matter how innocuous it may seem at the time, could have serious implications for the planner–client relationship that should be considered. In fact, in all incidents of self-disclosures there are benefits and risks that arise.
Benefits and Risks of Self-Disclosure
Some studies have shown positive results from therapist self-disclosure. Specifically, researchers found that clients were more likely to be honest and transparent with a counselor who had self-disclosed (Henretty, Currier, Berman, and Levitt 2014). This study indicated that self-disclosure could facilitate trust, humanize the practitioner, decrease fears of perfectionism, and help highlight similarities between the therapist and the client. In a similar study on teachers, Song, Kim, and Luo (2016) found that teacher self-disclosure functions as an important immediacy behavior as it helps to reduce the psychological distance between teachers and students, again helping to facilitate a closer relationship. When considering the benefits of self-disclosure, it can also be helpful to consider the risks of not self-disclosing (Barnett 2011). Clients can become distrusting, even fearful, that the counselor is withholding information to manipulate them. They can also begin to see the counselor as inhuman, which can make the clients less comfortable confiding in the counselor.
While there is significant evidence to support the positive benefits of practitioner self-disclosure, there are also clear drawbacks. It is human nature to compare ourselves to others. As a practitioner discloses personal information, the client may end up using that disclosure as a measuring stick to their own self-worth. Additionally, the client may try to model themselves after their practitioner, copying their preferences and choices. Through making oneself in the image of their practitioner, the client is not being given the chance to make their own choices (Johnsen and Ding 2021). Additionally, self-disclosure can lead to a form of behavior extrapolation, whereby a therapist self-discloses, and based on that self-disclosure, the client extrapolates what they have learned about the practitioner and makes assumptions about their therapist that may or may not be true. These assumptions can create a false narrative of who the practitioner is (Jolley 2019).
Examples of Potential Self-Disclosures in Financial Planning
Deliberate Verbal Self-Disclosure
One topic that can be emotionally distressing to certain clients is debt; after all, there is an established link between indebtedness and psychological well-being (Dunn and Mirzaie 2012). However, self-disclosures around debt by a financial planner are not uncommon. In particular, a client may ask the adviser to disclose whether or not they themselves use credit cards. Disclosure on the part of the adviser could signal approval, and the client may attempt to mimic the behavior. Not disclosing could create feelings of mistrust toward the adviser. . . Similarly, conversations about investments can create this double-edged sword. While the client may feel they can benefit from an understanding of how the adviser structures their own investments, this is not always the case. The client may fail to consider all relevant elements of either their own or their adviser’s financial situation. The client may have a different risk tolerance, time horizon, or set of goals than the adviser, thus potentially rendering the adviser’s investment strategy inappropriate for their own situation. Another topic where client solicitation of financial planner self-disclosure becomes prevalent is estate planning. The topic of estate planning can be complex, and oftentimes planning considerations can become a very emotional topic for clients. A financial planner’s role is to facilitate the conversation between a client and an estate planning attorney, who would draft the legal documents to achieve the ends of the client’s financial plan.
Deliberate Non-verbal Self-Disclosure
As previously mentioned, self-disclosure can be non-verbal as well. There have been discussions centered on how to create an appropriate office space for financial planning professionals (Byram, McCoy, Krueger, and Grable 2023). For example, traditionally financial advice has been delivered “across the desk,” where a financial professional, often adorned in suit and tie, sits in a big swivel chair on the other side of a large, executive desk. Often in the background, there are multiple flat-screen computer monitors or TVs, tuned into financial news networks. In this type of setting, what’s being disclosed to the client is that the planner is focused on investments. Considerations about tax planning, estate planning, insurance planning, or any other aspect of comprehensive financial planning are subordinated based on these non-verbal self-disclosures made by the planner.
Contrast this to a modern financial planning practice where the planner has some training in financial therapy and client psychology. Perhaps they have chosen to have a small standing desk in the corner. In the center of the room is a circular set of comfortable chairs, perhaps with a small coffee table for placing drinks. The planner has ditched the large desktop PC for a MacBook, and the only TV hanging on the wall is on the Travel Channel. The planner sits next to the clients, wearing slacks and a button-down. They have a financial planning software pulled up that focuses on asking about their comprehensive financial status, their goals and aspirations, and the timeline over which they hope to achieve those goals. The planner, through deliberate non-verbal self-disclosure in their office set up decisions, is giving clues to the client about the financial planning relationship and the importance of the work —in this case, placing the importance on investments only compared to holistic planning emphasis.
Accidental Verbal Self-Disclosure
This type of self-disclosure involves a practitioner making a statement that is not intended to be a self-disclosure to a client, but the client receives the information nonetheless, which has implications for the relationship between the planner and client. Financial planners make contractual attestations that they will abide by specific rules of conduct as professionals. Part of that attestation says that they will behave in a professional manner at all times, even when they are not “at work” (CFP Board n.d.). Even with this thought in mind, planners are prone to error, as all humans are. This means that at any moment, in a public setting, they risk the potential for accidental verbal self-disclosure. This could happen in multiple ways.
First, imagine a situation where a financial planner or therapist is out to dinner with friends. Perhaps the practitioner does not realize that a new client they have begun working with knows their friend. Maybe the client never mentioned to the friend that they were working with the planner. At dinner, thinking they are in the company of friends and not “at work,” the planner might open up about their opinions about federal student loan debt, and the potential for the government to cancel debt. Being a hot topic nationally, the fact that it comes up at dinner seems fairly trivial. However, if that friend ends up having a similar conversation with their friend (who is now the planner’s client), and the dots get connected, the adviser may have accidentally made a verbal disclosure to that new client. Perhaps the client holds the opposing viewpoint of the planner, and now they no longer feel comfortable discussing their concerns with the planner in the professional setting for fear of judgment. Had the conversation between the planner and the client taken place in the context of the office setting, the planner could have avoided disclosing if it was not in the best interest of the client and focused on helping the client. In this case, the self-disclosure was made unintentionally and could have adverse effects. Another example could simply be that the planner discloses that their children attend a certain private school. The planner may not have intentionally disclosed their views on private versus public schools, but the client may see this as a sign of the planner’s level of wealth or views on education funding.
Accidental Non-verbal Self-Disclosure
Much like accidental verbal self-disclosure, there are several very plausible scenarios that could create situations for a financial planner or therapist to accidentally disclose information about themselves in a non-verbal way. Items that might fall into this category could include anything that is a non-verbal disclosure that would occur outside of the office. In the office setting where you are meeting with clients, financial planners have the ability to be intentional and curate the environment to reflect whatever they are comfortable disclosing to the client. Outside of the office, however, it’s unreasonable to expect planners to curate every single aspect of their life through the lens of how a client might react to it. However, being aware that these accidental non-verbal self-disclosures are possible may allow practitioners to be more cognizant of how they will handle these situations.
One possible situation that could create accidental non-verbal self-disclosure is when a planner and client see each other in the parking lot of the office or any other public setting. As the client sees the planner or therapist getting out of their car, they are making judgments about what that car says about the planner. These judgments will be different depending on the client’s perspective, but they will be made nonetheless. Imagine a client who sees a planner stepping out of a modest sedan. Depending on the client’s existing money scripts, which are closely held beliefs about money (Klontz, Kahler, and Klontz 2008), they may perceive the planner as unsuccessful for driving such a modest car. Perhaps they expect that if the planner was successful financially, they would be driving a nicer car. Contrast this with an adviser who steps out of a $200,000 sports car. A client with a different money script might think they are paying the planner too much in fees, and perhaps that the planner isn’t practicing the frugality they are preaching. None of these conclusions being drawn by the client are necessarily true. However, information is being non-verbally disclosed, and though it is being done accidentally, the impact on the planner–client or therapist–client relationship has been made.
This category specifically is one planners might want to consider carefully because it is so broad and can cover so many areas of life. Using the same logic that we apply to the example of what kind of car a practitioner drives, we could conduct the same thought experiment on how we dress, where we dine, what activities we engage in for recreation, where we buy our coffee, and what kind of language we use. In all these circumstances, fair or unfair, we are self-disclosing, and the client is going to internalize and process that information, and it will have an impact on advice or treatment.
Deliberate and Accidental Internet Self-Disclosure
The differences between accidental and deliberate self-disclosure are discussed here in the context of the internet, and both are important to consider. Internet searches can provide clients with a huge database of information about a planner, not only professionally but also personally. Clients can find links to current employer websites, previous employer websites, research written by the practitioner, blog posts, professional affiliations and memberships, and even third-party sites that aggregate data about specific professionals. Factoring social media into the equation, it becomes even more prevalent. Though a practitioner can choose to make social media accounts more or less private, the existence of the social media accounts themselves are typically publicly available information and can signal political or social preferences of the practitioner, albeit unintentionally. One does not have to think very hard to understand what types of inferences clients might make, for example, about a practitioner’s political affiliations just by what platforms they are or are not on. This is not a controversial statement, so planners must be thoughtful about what their digital presence is saying to current or potential clients. Or perhaps a practitioner is enjoying personal time with friends at a concert or sporting event. This is personal, social time, and so perhaps alcohol is being consumed. Maybe the preference is for clients to not see the planner’s funny-face pictures after having had “a few too many” with friends who are not bound by the same professional standards of conduct as the professional. Unfortunately, the professional may have little say-so, as once that picture is taken, someone in the group can post and start tagging other members of the party. While most apps provide the ability to “untag,” perhaps a client or prospect was searching and found the unfavorable post. It is this new reality that makes thinking about internet self-disclosure so challenging.
Best Practices
There is almost no conceivable need to self-disclose early in the financial planning relationship with clients. The initial relationship is about client discovery and building trust. Building trust and client discovery are best done by asking open-ended questions, asking follow-up questions, and keeping the focus solely on the client’s financial facts, meaning, and emotions. However, over time, self-disclosure may be useful. The following sections will review when and how self-disclosure may be beneficial. The underlying goal of all this advice is to help planners make self-disclosures intentionally and to ensure that self-disclosure is employed with the primary aim of benefiting the client and their financial well-being, not because the planner has something on their mind, wants to process it, wants validation, or desires support from others on the topic.
A critical consideration in financial planning self-disclosure is the choice of material to disclose. Planners will want to prioritize sharing resolved personal issues or experiences, as opposed to unresolved matters. By doing so, the focus remains on the client’s needs and goals, rather than diverting attention to the planner’s unresolved concerns. Aligning self-disclosure with the client’s material or specific financial concerns helps ensure relevance and demonstrates empathy.
Once the topic is chosen but prior to engaging in self-disclosure, planners can benefit from taking a bit of time to evaluate how their clients might respond to the disclosure. This might be talking it over with another adviser, a friend, or a partner. Discuss whether the disclosure is likely to be helpful in the given context by reviewing both pros and cons. Anticipating potential reactions and weighing the benefits of self-disclosure will help mitigate the chance that self-disclosure backfires. Furthermore, establishing a strong therapeutic relationship is paramount prior to any disclosure. Planners want to prioritize building trust and rapport with their clients before utilizing self-disclosure (Ziv-Beiman and Shahar 2016). This foundation of trust provides a supportive context for sharing personal information.
Another pre-conversation consideration is what self-disclosure may do to professionalism and appropriate relationship boundaries. Rather than adopting a routine practice of self-disclosing, be judicious, with the aim of striking a balance between relevant information sharing and maintaining professional boundaries (Longmire 2019). For instance, an adviser might disclose that at one point they too had student debt. Yet this disclosure is not so that the adviser can tell their triumphant story about how they moved past the debt or to downplay the client’s stress about their own personal debt. This is a quick-in and then quick-out story to provide reassurance, comfort, ideas, and support for the client. The goal in keeping it short is that then the practitioner can shift the conversation and make sure the focus is back on the client where it should be.
Assuming all has gone well in the pre-considerations, the next step is to use the self-disclosure. Here there are also important considerations that help to emphasize connection and the efficacy of the disclosure as it pertains to the adviser and the client alliance as well as goals. Emphasizing similarities between the planner and the client when providing the disclosure is key. By highlighting shared experiences or common ground, planners can foster a sense of connection and enhance the therapeutic alliance. However, it is crucial to strike a balance, ensuring that the client’s needs and experiences remain central to the conversation.
Given that the primary objective is to support the client’s financial well-being rather than addressing personal needs or seeking validation through self-disclosure, getting the client’s read on how this disclosure landed or what it means to them is a critical final step. After delivering self-disclosure, it is important to redirect the focus back to the client, encouraging discussion and exploration of their reactions and feelings. Advisers may ask the client, after the disclosure, “Having shared a bit about my experience, what is coming up for you?” Any questions that solicit information about the client’s interpretations, feelings, understandings, and new ideas can be wonderful for making the adviser’s self-disclosure about the client.
Observing the client’s reactions to self-disclosure is also a vital step. By closely paying attention to their responses, planners can gain valuable insights into the impact and effectiveness of the disclosure. This evaluation will inform future decisions regarding the use of self-disclosure with that specific client. Advisers may want to look for head nods, signaling agreement, as opposed to clients shaking their heads or looking away. Asking feedback questions as well as observing body language will help the adviser to decide if this self-disclosure helped or perhaps was not as helpful, which is not a total deal-breaker. For instance, if the adviser self-discloses and the client responds negatively, asking open-ended questions to delve into differences or just asking the client to talk more about what they are thinking and feeling can still get them talking. Once the client is talking, even if it is about how the disclosure was not helpful or that they see themselves as totally different, the adviser can connect with these points, summarize and label emotions and ideas, and build connections.
When or If Clients Press for Disclosure
In the event that clients press for disclosure, especially in the early relationship, it can be really helpful to be transparent with your clients about the self-disclosure. Different groups of people, cultures, genders, and statuses impact the importance of disclosure (Phillips, Rothbard, and Dumas 2009). Differently stated, for one reason or another, different clients may push an adviser to disclose, not meaning any harm or intrusion. In these moments, it is best practice to state or admit that one would like more time to process thoughts and feelings around a topic and hold off on presenting opinions. This response for more time is more authentic than being reactionary, but the adviser can then demonstrate trustworthiness by circling back.
By applying these evidence-based best practices for self-disclosure, financial planners can enhance their effectiveness and create a supportive environment for their clients. However, it is worth noting that even seasoned therapists have difficulty discerning what and when to disclose, so it is essential to role-play around certain topics that you may have heightened emotions toward. It can also be beneficial to do your own self-exploration around certain topics or meet with a financial therapist to explore your relationship with money more intently (McCoy, Molchan, Ponciano, and Archuleta n.d.).
References
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