12 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor
Before You Hire a Wealth Quarterback

What to ask, what a complete answer contains, and how to check it

What Should You Ask a Financial Advisor Before You Hire One?

Ask about standard of care, who else pays them, scope, total cost in dollars, who actually does the work, how success is measured and reported, how disagreements with your CPA or attorney get resolved, and what a real deliverable looks like. Then verify each answer against the public record rather than the pitch: Form ADV Part 2A, Form CRS, and the disciplinary history on the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database.

The twelve questions below are the version of that list we use with entrepreneurs, because business concentration, entity structure and irregular income change most of the answers. The role being interviewed for — the advisor who holds the whole picture and convenes everyone else — is what we call a personal CFO, and the case for having one at all is set out on that page. Firms that hold that role in-house are usually described as a family office or a fractional family office; the twelve questions apply either way.

Nothing here is a recommendation of any particular firm, including ours. The point of a written list is that you can ask the same twelve questions of every candidate and compare the answers side by side.

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What Are the 12 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor?

Ask all twelve, in order, of every candidate.

The order matters: the first five establish whether the relationship can be trusted and what it costs, and the rest test whether the firm can actually do the work. The right-hand column describes what a complete answer contains — not a script to listen for, but the substance that should be in the answer however the candidate phrases it.

# Question	What a complete answer contains
1. Are you a fiduciary — and are you a fiduciary for everything you do for me?	A yes, plus the scope in writing. An SEC-registered investment adviser owes a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. A dually registered professional can act as an adviser on one part of the relationship and as a broker-dealer or insurance agent on another, so the answer that matters names which capacity applies to which service, and points you to the document that says so.
2. What percentage of your clients are business owners?	A specific figure the candidate is willing to have checked against Form ADV Part 1, which reports client types and account counts, together with examples of owner-specific work: entity structure, concentration, irregular income, succession. Serving mostly salaried households is not a defect; it is a mismatch with your problem, and the answer should let you judge that for yourself.
3. How exactly do you coordinate my CPA, attorney and insurance advisor?	A described mechanism rather than a willingness. Who convenes the meeting, on what cadence, who sets the agenda, who writes down what was decided, and what happens between meetings. Ask what the other professionals are asked to supply, and ask for the name of a professional outside the firm who has been through the process.
4. What do you deliver yourself, and what do you coordinate?	A clean line between the two. Some firms manage a portfolio and coordinate everything else; some carry direct capability across tax, estate strategy, risk and business advisory and use your CPA and attorney for preparation and documentation. Both are legitimate. What you are testing is whether the candidate describes the line accurately or blurs it.
5. What will I pay in total, and how?	A total-cost answer in dollars, not a rate. Fee schedules sit in Form ADV Part 2A Item 5. Ask the candidate to include everything: the advisory fee, underlying fund expenses, platform or custodial charges, and any compensation received from anyone other than you. The SEC’s own version of this question asks what happens to a $10,000 investment — how much goes to fees and costs, and how much is actually invested.
6. Can you put me in touch with clients whose situation resembles mine?	A yes, with the understanding that the candidate selects the names. Since the marketing rule took effect on November 4, 2022, an adviser may use testimonials in advertising, but must disclose clearly and prominently whether the person is a client and whether they were compensated. A reference call is most useful for process questions the firm cannot script: what happened when something went wrong, and how long it took.
7. How will you measure and report success?	Criteria set before the engagement starts, reported on a stated schedule, and covering more than investment return. Reasonable answers include progress against stated objectives, whether the documents and entities have been reviewed against each other, tax outcomes against a defined benchmark, and risk-adjusted performance against an appropriate index. Be sceptical of a dollar figure offered for “coordination value” unless the candidate can show the method behind it.
8. What happens when you disagree with my other advisors?	A process, and an admission that it happens. Disagreement between competent professionals is normal and is one of the reasons to have several. The answer to look for describes how each position gets stated, how the trade-offs are put to you, and who decides — which should be you. “That does not happen” and “I would overrule them” are both answers, and neither is a good one.
9. How do you stay current on tax, estate and investment changes?	Named sources, named credentials, and a described trigger for contacting you when the law moves. Credentials can be verified independently: CFP Board maintains a public verification tool, FINRA publishes a Professional Designations database, and FINRA states plainly that it does not approve or endorse any credential. A designation you cannot look up is not a qualification.
10. What does onboarding involve, and how long does it take?	A sequence with named deliverables and a timeline the candidate will commit to in writing: discovery, contact with your existing professionals, an assessment of the current position, and an implementation plan with owners and dates. Ask what is expected of you, and when. A vague answer here usually predicts a vague engagement.
11. How often will we meet, and what gets covered?	A standing cadence plus a rule for the unscheduled. The events that create cross-professional work — an entity change, a financing, a liquidity event, a change in the family, a change in the law — do not wait for the next quarterly review, so ask what triggers a call and who is expected to initiate it.
12. Can I see a sample deliverable?	An anonymised example of the actual work product: a plan, a quarterly report, a set of coordination notes. Read it for whether a non-specialist can follow it, whether recommendations carry reasoning, and whether anyone is named as accountable for each next step. Unwillingness to show anything, even redacted, usually means there is nothing systematic to show.

The $10,000 fee question in row 5 is one of the conversation starters the SEC requires firms to include in Form CRS; the full set is in the next section. Marketing rule reference: Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-1 as amended, compliance date November 4, 2022.

Is a Financial Advisor a Fiduciary, and What Does That Mean Since Reg BI?

An SEC-registered investment adviser owes its clients a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, comprising a duty of care and a duty of loyalty. The SEC set out what that means in its Commission Interpretation Regarding Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers (Release IA-5248, 84 Fed. Reg. 33669, July 12, 2019): the adviser must serve the client’s best interest at all times and must not subordinate the client’s interest to its own, and must eliminate or fully and fairly disclose conflicts so that the client can give informed consent.

The old “fiduciary versus suitability” comparison is out of date. Since the compliance date of June 30, 2020, a broker-dealer making a recommendation to a retail customer is governed by Regulation Best Interest (Exchange Act Rule 15l-1), which requires it to act in the retail customer’s best interest and not to place its own financial interest ahead of the customer’s. FINRA then amended its suitability rule so that Rule 2111 does not apply to recommendations subject to Reg BI. “Merely suitable” is no longer the standard for retail brokerage recommendations, and a candidate still drawing the contrast that way is telling you something about how current they are.

What still differs is scope and duration rather than the word. Reg BI attaches to a recommendation, and the SEC has been explicit that it imposes no duty to monitor an account beyond that recommendation unless the broker-dealer agrees to provide monitoring. An investment adviser’s fiduciary duty applies to the entire relationship and generally includes ongoing advice and monitoring. So the question worth asking is not “are you a fiduciary” but “are you a fiduciary for everything you do for me, for as long as you do it, and where in writing does it say so.”

Two boundaries are worth knowing before the meeting. Fixed insurance products sold outside a securities recommendation fall under neither Reg BI nor the Advisers Act; annuity recommendations are governed by state insurance law, and most states have adopted the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation (#275) as revised in February 2020, which applies a best-interest standard of its own. And a dually registered professional can act in either capacity depending on the transaction — which is precisely what Form CRS exists to make visible. Our knowledge base entry on the fiduciary standard goes further into how the duty applies in practice.

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Which Questions Does the SEC Tell You to Ask?

The SEC publishes its own list, and every firm is required to put it in front of you.

Form CRS — the client relationship summary that both investment advisers and broker-dealers must deliver to retail investors — carries a set of “conversation starters” that the SEC also publishes on Investor.gov. They are reproduced verbatim below. They overlap with the twelve questions above and are worth asking alongside them, because a candidate’s reaction to a question their own regulator wrote is informative in itself.

Question (verbatim, SEC)	What it is testing
“Given my financial situation, should I choose an investment advisory service? Should I choose a brokerage service? Should I choose both types of services? Why or why not?”	Forces the candidate to say which regulatory relationship they are proposing, and why that one fits you. A firm that offers both should be able to explain the trade-off without steering.
“How will you choose investments to recommend to me?”	Surfaces whether there is a stated process, and whether the menu is limited to proprietary or affiliated products.
“What is your relevant experience, including your licenses, education and other qualifications? What do these qualifications mean?”	Separates credentials that carry examination and continuing-education requirements from letters that do not. Every answer here is independently checkable.
“Help me understand how these fees and costs might affect my investments. If I give you $10,000 to invest, how much will go to fees and costs, and how much will be invested for me?”	Converts a percentage into dollars, which is the only form in which fee structures can be compared across firms.
“How might your conflicts of interest affect me, and how will you address them?”	The single most useful question on the list. A candidate who claims to have no conflicts has either not read their own Form ADV or has not thought about it.
“As a financial professional, do you have any disciplinary history? For what type of conduct?”	Ask it even though you will check it yourself, because the answer tells you how the candidate handles an uncomfortable question.
“Who is my primary contact person? Is he or she a representative of an investment adviser or a broker-dealer? Who can I talk to if I have concerns about how this person is treating me?”	Establishes who does the work rather than who sells it, and who escalates when something goes wrong.

Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Conversation Starters, Investor.gov, and Form CRS. Reproduced as published. The SEC does not endorse any firm, including ours.

How Much Does a Financial Advisor Cost, and How Do You Compare Fee Models?

Four arrangements are in common use: a percentage of assets under management, a flat retainer or subscription, hourly billing, and hybrids that combine a flat planning fee with an asset-based fee. Asset-based pricing remains the industry default. The Investment Adviser Association reported that 95.5% of SEC-registered advisers offered a fee based on client assets in 2024, that 78.1% combined it with some other arrangement, and that 49.9% offered a fixed fee or an hourly fee or both — so most firms can quote you more than one structure if you ask.

Each structure creates a different incentive, and none of them is neutral. An asset-based fee ties the firm’s revenue to the balance it manages, which can bias advice about paying down debt, funding a business, or buying real estate with money that would otherwise be invested. A flat fee removes that bias but does not scale with complexity, so it can under-price genuinely complicated work and over-price simple work. Hourly billing prices the work honestly and discourages clients from calling. Commission-based compensation introduces a third party who is paying for the recommendation. Ask which bias applies to the arrangement in front of you and how the firm manages it — that is the conflicts question in its most concrete form.

Whatever the model, insist on a total-dollar answer. Fee schedules are disclosed in Form ADV Part 2A Item 5, and the SEC’s own conversation starter is deliberately arithmetic: on $10,000 invested, how much goes to fees and costs and how much is actually invested. Add the layers the headline rate excludes — underlying fund expenses, platform and custody charges, trading costs — and ask in writing whether the firm or anyone at it receives compensation from any source other than you.

For context on our own arrangement: Dew Wealth’s core model is a flat monthly subscription with no product commissions and no referral fees, which is uncommon in this industry. The mechanics of every fee we charge are set out in our Form ADV Part 2A, which is the document you should be reading for any firm you are considering, not the website. Our knowledge base explains what fee-only advisory does and does not mean.

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How Do You Verify What an Advisor Tells You?

Every answer in the interview has a public record behind it. Check the record.

This is the step most people skip, and it is the cheapest part of the process. Two firms giving identical answers in a meeting can look very different once the filings are open. Do the checking before the second meeting, not after the paperwork.

Source	What it shows	Where to find it
Form ADV Part 2A (the brochure)	Services, fee schedule, conflicts of interest, disciplinary history, and the firm’s other business activities, in plain English.	Ask the firm for it, or download it from the SEC’s IAPD database. Delivery is required.
Form ADV Part 1	Client types, number of accounts, assets under management, ownership, affiliations, and reported disciplinary events.	IAPD. This is where you check a claim about what share of clients are business owners.
Form CRS (Form ADV Part 3)	A short summary of the relationship, the services, the fees and the conflicts — plus the SEC’s conversation starters.	Required for retail investors; also on IAPD.
Investment Adviser Public Disclosure	Registration status and disciplinary disclosures for advisory firms and their representatives.	adviserinfo.sec.gov
FINRA BrokerCheck	The brokerage side of the record: registrations, employment history, customer complaints, regulatory actions.	brokercheck.finra.org. IAPD links across to it for dually registered firms.
Credential verification	Whether the letters after a name are current, and what the issuing body actually requires.	CFP Board publishes a verification tool; FINRA publishes a Professional Designations database and states that it does not approve or endorse any credential.
State securities and insurance regulators	State-registered advisers, and insurance licensing and complaints, which sit outside the SEC and FINRA systems.	Your state securities regulator and state insurance department.

One caveat about titles. “Financial advisor,” “wealth manager” and, for that matter, “wealth quarterback” are job descriptions rather than licences: no regulator confers them and none can be verified. What can be verified is the registration behind the title and the credentials claimed alongside it, which is why every row above points at a filing or a register rather than at a biography.

How Do You Judge a Coordination Claim?

Almost every candidate will say they coordinate with your other professionals. The claim is nearly free to make and hard to check, so it needs its own test. Ask for the mechanics: who convenes the meeting, how often it happens whether or not anything is wrong, who writes the agenda, who records what was decided, and what the other professionals are asked to provide beforehand. Then ask for the name of a CPA or attorney outside the firm who has sat through it. Someone who has done this can answer in specifics within about a minute; someone who has not will describe an intention.

Ask what the candidate does when coordination fails, because it does. A professional who will not release working papers, a document that was drafted but never funded, an entity change made without checking what the shares depended on: these are the ordinary failure modes, and a firm that has managed a coordinated team has met all of them. Our knowledge base entry on the uncoordinated advisors problem describes the pattern these two questions are testing for, and our page on integrated financial planning sets out the specific conflicts that recur when nobody holds the whole picture, and is the longer answer to questions 3 and 8.

Finally, be careful with a dollar figure. If a candidate tells you coordination is worth a specific amount per year, ask for the methodology and the population it was measured on. A number without a method is a marketing claim, and treating it as an estimate of your own outcome is exactly the mistake the question was meant to prevent.

What Should Worry You in an Advisor’s Answers?

Six answers that should slow the process down.

None of these proves misconduct, and a good firm can trip over one of them on a bad day. Each is a reason to ask a second question rather than to walk out, and each has a specific follow-up.

Signal	Why it matters	What to ask next
A guaranteed or predicted return	Investment results cannot be guaranteed, and an SEC-registered adviser’s advertising is governed by the marketing rule (Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-1), which prohibits untrue or misleading statements and material claims the firm cannot substantiate on request.	Ask for the substantiation in writing. If a projection is offered, ask what assumptions it rests on and what happens if they do not hold.
Reluctance to hand over Form ADV Part 2A or Form CRS	Both are disclosure documents the firm already files, and both are public. Hesitation is not a paperwork problem.	Download them yourself from IAPD before the next meeting and read Item 5 (fees), Item 9 (disciplinary) and Item 10 (other affiliations).
A rate instead of a total	A headline percentage excludes fund expenses, platform and custody charges and any third-party compensation, so two firms quoting the same rate can cost materially different amounts.	Ask the $10,000 question from Form CRS and require the answer in dollars, in writing, including everything.
Your existing advisors dismissed before their work has been read	A candidate who criticises professionals whose files they have not seen is telling you how they will handle disagreement later, and creating conflict you will have to manage.	Ask what specifically they would want to review before forming a view, and how they would raise a concern with that professional directly.
A title standing in for a credential	Titles are not conferred by any regulator, and FINRA states that it does not approve or endorse professional credentials or designations.	Ask which credentials are held, then verify each one against the issuing body’s own register.
Fiduciary status asserted but not written down	A dually registered professional can act as a fiduciary on part of a relationship and not on another part, which is a legitimate structure but only if it is disclosed.	Ask for the scope in the engagement agreement, and check it against what Form CRS says about the firm’s capacities.

Questions Entrepreneurs Ask About Choosing an Advisor

What questions should I ask a financial advisor in the first meeting?

Start with the five that determine whether the rest of the conversation is worth having: are you a fiduciary and for which parts of this relationship; who else pays you; what proportion of your clients look like me; what will I pay in total, in dollars; and who will actually do the work. Everything else — process, reporting, coordination, deliverables — is a second-meeting conversation, and is easier to judge once you have read the firm’s Form ADV Part 2A.

Is a financial advisor required to be a fiduciary?

It depends on the capacity they are acting in, not on the title. An SEC-registered investment adviser owes a fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 across the whole relationship. A broker-dealer recommending securities to a retail customer must act in that customer’s best interest under Regulation Best Interest, in force since June 30, 2020, but that obligation attaches to the recommendation and carries no duty to monitor afterwards unless the firm agrees to one. Insurance sales outside a securities recommendation are governed by state law instead. Many professionals are registered in more than one capacity, so ask which one applies to which service.

How do I check whether a financial advisor has a disciplinary history?

Search the firm and the individual on the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database at adviserinfo.sec.gov. If the record shows disclosures reported, open the full report and read them rather than counting them. For anyone registered on the brokerage side, IAPD links across to FINRA BrokerCheck, which carries customer complaints and regulatory actions. State-registered advisers and insurance licences sit with your state securities regulator and state insurance department.

How much should I expect a financial advisor to cost?

There is no single answer, and any range quoted without reference to a specific firm is close to useless for comparison. What you can do is make the figure comparable. The Investment Adviser Association reported that 95.5% of SEC-registered advisers offered an asset-based fee in 2024 and that about half also offered fixed or hourly pricing, so most firms can present more than one structure. Ask each candidate for the all-in annual cost in dollars, including underlying fund expenses and platform charges, and check it against Item 5 of their Form ADV Part 2A.

What is a wealth quarterback, and is it a real credential?

It is a job description, not a credential. “Wealth quarterback,” “financial quarterback,” “wealth manager” and “financial advisor” are titles a firm chooses for itself; no regulator confers or verifies them, and FINRA states that it does not approve or endorse professional designations. What is verifiable is the registration underneath the title and any lettered credentials claimed alongside it. Treat the title as a description of the role you are hiring for — the person who holds the whole picture and convenes everyone else — and then check the registration.

How do the wealthiest families
decide who to trust with the whole picture?

They interview for the coordinating role specifically, and they check the answers against the filings. Schedule an assessment and we will go through your current advisory line-up question by question — who is a fiduciary for what, who is paid by whom, what is genuinely being coordinated and what is only assumed to be — and give you that in writing, coordinated by a Fractional Family Office^® that can see the tax return, the portfolio, the entities and the documents together.

Take control of your financial future. Use our free Wealth Waste Calculator^® to estimate what your current structure may be costing you each year.

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Page last updated: August 2, 2026

Disclosure

Dew Wealth Management, LLC ("Dew Wealth") is an SEC-registered investment adviser located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. The information provided in this material is for general informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. All investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal.

This material contains the opinions of Dew Wealth, and such opinions are subject to change without notice. This material has been distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product.

Nothing on this page is a recommendation of, an endorsement of, or an opinion on any particular firm, adviser, broker-dealer, or financial professional, and no example answer described here is a description of any specific firm. The questions and evaluation criteria are general educational guidance; the right choice of adviser depends on individual circumstances that this page does not know. Dew Wealth is itself an SEC-registered investment adviser and would be one of the firms a reader might evaluate, which is a conflict of interest a reader should weigh when reading selection criteria published by an adviser.

References to "advanced tax strategies," "billionaire models," "family office approaches," and other similar terms are general descriptions and are not guarantees of specific outcomes. Tax strategies that may be appropriate for one individual may not be appropriate for another, and all strategies are subject to changes in tax laws and regulations. Dew Wealth is not a law firm or accounting firm, and no portion of this content should be interpreted as legal, accounting, or tax advice. Certain representatives of Dew Wealth maintain insurance licenses to allow for consultation on insurance needs; they do not solicit clients for commission-based insurance sales, and such licenses are maintained for the purpose of receiving trail commissions on previously implemented policies, as described in our Form ADV Part 2A.

Regulatory and third-party references on this page are drawn from published sources: the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Commission Interpretation Regarding Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers, Release IA-5248, 84 Fed. Reg. 33669, July 12, 2019; Regulation Best Interest, Exchange Act Rule 15l-1, compliance date June 30, 2020; Form CRS; and the Conversation Starters published on Investor.gov), FINRA (Rule 2111 as amended so as not to apply to recommendations subject to Regulation Best Interest; BrokerCheck; and the Professional Designations database), the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation #275, as revised February 2020), and the Investment Adviser Association (Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot, 2025 edition reporting 2024 data). Dew Wealth did not prepare these materials and does not endorse the statements within them. Rules, figures and filing requirements are stated as of August 2026 and are subject to change; readers should verify current requirements with the relevant regulator before relying on them.

Fractional Family Office^® and Wealth Waste Calculator^® are registered trademarks of Dew Wealth Management, LLC. Make Rich Real^® is also a registered trademark of Dew Wealth Management, LLC.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product will be profitable or equal any historical performance levels.

Dew Wealth may only transact business in those states in which it is notice-filed or qualifies for an exemption or exclusion from notice-filing requirements. For information regarding the registration status of Dew Wealth and its professionals, please see the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov.

For full details about our services, fees, and other important information, please review our Form ADV Part 2A, which is available on the SEC's website or by request from our office. Our Relationship Summary (Form CRS) is also available on request.

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12 Questions to Ask a Financial AdvisorBefore You Hire a Wealth Quarterback