A Committee of Errors

It can be dangerous to assume that having an investment professional, a tax professional, and a lawyer means you have a team working together.

If those professionals are siloed, you have a committee, and there’s a huge difference. 

A team shares information, works toward the same objective, and understands how each person's decisions affect everyone else's.

A committee is just a collection of smart people working independently.

If your investment advisor, CPA, and estate attorney rarely talk to one another, you're not getting a team, and you become the go-between.

You tell your CPA you completed a Roth conversion, but probably not why.

You tell your attorney you want to reduce estate taxes but probably don't hand over a spreadsheet showing how every account is titled or who each beneficiary is.

You update your financial advisor after meeting with your attorney, hoping nothing gets lost in translation.

None of that is really your job. Coordinating specialists is practically its own profession. That’s not a problem if you want take all of that on, but if you’re looking to delegate and free up some bandwidth by having a committee, you’re setting yourself up for frustration.

The problem isn't that any one advisor is doing bad work. It's that each one only sees the part of the picture in front of them. There may be blind spots that are only visible when looking at the whole picture that’s where it can become dangerous to presume your committee is a team.

The CPA doesn't know a Roth conversion is being considered, so the tax return misses an opportunity.

The attorney drafts a trust without realizing your beneficiary designations already point somewhere else.

The investment portfolio is built for growth, while no one notices the tax or estate consequences quietly building in the background.

Every recommendation makes sense on its own.

Together, they can work against each other.

This isn't a competence problem.

It's a coordination problem.

Think about an operating room.

There’s a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, nurses, and technicians, each with specialized expertise. But no one is working in isolation. They’re constantly communicating because what one person knows changes what everyone else does.

Financial planning works the same way.

Which raises an important question:

Who's running the play?

In my view, that's where a financial planner adds the most value.

Not by replacing your CPA or your attorney, but by helping integrate the advice[i] from those professionals into a plan.

Their job isn't to tell other professionals how to do theirs.

It's to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

Most people never experience that level of coordination.

Instead, they have three talented professionals sending separate invoices and working from three different sets of information.

The cost doesn't show up as a fee.

It shows up as missed opportunities, duplicated work, unnecessary taxes, and strategies that solve one problem while quietly creating another.

Credentials matter.

Experience matters.

But communication might matter just as much.

Because a team isn't just a group of qualified people.

It's a group of qualified people moving in the same direction.

It's worth asking yourself which one you have