Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor: A Fee-Only Fiduciary Checklist

Why the Order of Your Questions Matters

Most people interviewing a financial advisor start with the wrong questions. They ask about market outlook, investment picks, or performance history. Those are understandable questions, but they skip the two things that actually determine whether an advisor is working for you: how the advisor is paid, and whether they are legally required to act in your best interest. Everything else, including whether your planning, investments, and taxes are handled by one coordinated team or handed between separate firms, follows from those first two answers.

Below are eight questions to ask a financial advisor before you hire one, in the order that matters most. Ask the first two regardless of your situation. The rest tell you whether the advisor’s structure, credentials, and process match how you actually want to be served, and whether the coordination you assume is happening actually is.

Start With Fiduciary Duty and Fees

1. Are You a Fiduciary, and Will You Put That in Writing?

A fiduciary is legally required to act in your best interest and to disclose conflicts of interest. Not every professional who calls themselves a “financial advisor” is held to that standard at all times.

What a good answer looks like: “Yes. We are a fee-only Registered Investment Adviser and act as a fiduciary at all times. That commitment is described in our Form ADV Part 2A, which we can provide before you hire us.”

What to watch for: An advisor who says they are a fiduciary “in most cases” or only for certain accounts may revert to a lower suitability standard for other products or recommendations. Ask them to be specific about when the fiduciary standard applies and when it does not.

2. How Are You Paid?

Compensation structure shapes incentives. There are generally three models: commission-based (paid by the products sold), fee-based (a fee to you, plus the ability to earn commissions), and fee-only (compensated exclusively by you, with no commissions or product-related payments).

Consider a simple example. Two advisors each recommend an annuity to the same client. A commission-based advisor may earn a substantial upfront payment from the insurance company for that sale, whether or not it is the best fit for the client’s plan. A fee-only advisor recommending the same product earns nothing extra for it; their fee is the same whether the client buys it or not. That difference in incentive does not prove either recommendation is wrong, but it changes whose interests are aligned with the advice being given.

What a good answer looks like: A direct answer naming the model, with no hedging: “We are fee-only. We are compensated only by our clients, and we do not accept commissions, referral fees, or other third-party compensation.”

What to watch for: Vague language, or an advisor who describes themselves as “fee-based” as though it were the same as “fee-only.” The two are different, and the difference affects whose interests come first when a recommendation is made.

Then Ask About Expertise and Structure

3. What Credentials Do You Hold, and What Do They Mean?

Credentials are a useful shorthand, but only if you know what they represent. A few of the most common in financial planning:

• CFP® (Certified Financial Planner): Requires completing a defined curriculum, passing a comprehensive exam, meeting experience requirements, and completing ongoing continuing education. It is the most widely recognized credential for comprehensive financial planning.
• CPA (Certified Public Accountant): A state-licensed accounting credential. A CPA on your planning team can prepare tax returns and model your tax situation with return-level detail, rather than estimates.
• PFS (Personal Financial Specialist): A financial planning credential available only to CPAs, combining tax expertise with financial planning training.
• EA (Enrolled Agent): A federally licensed tax practitioner authorized by the IRS to represent taxpayers. An EA on the team means tax preparation and tax planning can happen without handing your return to an outside preparer.

Ask where these professionals sit: on the advisor’s own team, or outsourced to a separate firm you would need to coordinate with yourself.

What a good answer looks like: A specific list of who holds which credential, how each one is used in your plan, and confirmation that credential status can be verified independently (see the verification steps below).

What to watch for: An advisor who cannot name a specific credential beyond a general job title, or who describes tax expertise as something they “have a relationship with” at another firm rather than a colleague on their own team.

4. Are Your Services Integrated or Siloed?

Some firms hand you off between separate specialists for planning, investment management, and tax work, each optimizing their own piece without a shared view of the whole picture. Others build financial planning, investment management, and tax planning and preparation around a single, coordinated plan.

Here is what the difference looks like in practice. A retiree with a siloed setup asks her outside accountant about a large IRA withdrawal in December. The accountant confirms the tax bill but has no visibility into her investment allocation or the rest of her financial plan, so the withdrawal is sized around that year’s tax return alone. In a coordinated setup, the same decision is made by a team that already knows her income sources, her bracket for the year, and her long-term withdrawal strategy, so the size and timing of the withdrawal is set with the whole plan in view, not just the return being filed.

What a good answer looks like: A description of how planning, investment, and tax decisions are made by the same team, using the same current information, rather than shared occasionally between separate firms. See how we approach integrated financial planning and what makes our structure different.

What to watch for: An answer that describes tax planning as “something we coordinate with your accountant once a year.” That structure leaves the two disciplines working from different, and sometimes outdated, information.

Ask About the Relationship Itself

5. How Often Will We Meet, and What Happens Between Meetings?

Financial planning is not a one-time event. Ask how often you will meet, whether reviews are scheduled proactively or only when you ask, and how the advisor communicates between meetings when your circumstances change, such as a job change, an inheritance, or a market decline.

What a good answer looks like: A specific meeting cadence, for example at least annually with additional check-ins as needed, and a clear description of who you will actually talk to, rather than a rotating point of contact.

What to watch for: An answer that focuses only on the annual review and has no plan for the months in between. Life and markets do not wait for a scheduled meeting, and a firm without a process for off-cycle changes may not notice a change in your circumstances until the next review.

6. What Is Your Investment Philosophy?

Ask how the advisor builds portfolios, how they think about risk and cost, and how they would communicate with you during a market decline. Be cautious of anyone who promises to beat the market, time market moves, or guarantee a particular outcome. No advisor can make those promises, and an evidence-based approach acknowledges that markets involve risk and that past performance does not guarantee future results.

What a good answer looks like: A description of a disciplined, evidence-based process tied to your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance, with clear information about all-in costs.

What to watch for: Confident predictions about market direction, pressure to act quickly on a specific idea, or reluctance to explain fees and costs in plain terms. A philosophy you cannot understand in a first conversation is a philosophy you will struggle to stick with during a downturn.

Ask About Coordination and Scope

7. How Do You Coordinate Taxes Alongside Investments and Planning?

Tax decisions, including retirement account withdrawals, Roth conversions, and capital gains timing, are rarely independent of your investment and planning decisions. Ask whether tax planning happens on the same team, using the same data, at the same time as everything else, or whether it is handled separately and reactively at filing time.

A common example is a Roth conversion. Converting too much in a single year can push a client into a higher tax bracket, trigger a Medicare premium surcharge, or affect the taxability of Social Security benefits. When the same team runs the numbers, models the bracket impact, and executes the conversion, those trade-offs are weighed together before the transaction happens. When an outside preparer only sees the conversion after the fact, on the following year’s tax return, there is nothing left to coordinate; the decision has already been made.

What a good answer looks like: A description of how tax preparation and tax planning inform decisions made elsewhere in your plan throughout the year, not only at filing time. Learn more about our approach to coordinated financial and tax planning.

What to watch for: An advisor who treats tax planning as an annual filing exercise rather than an input into decisions made throughout the year, or who cannot describe a specific example of a tax-aware decision they made on a client’s behalf.

8. What Happens If I Need Help With Something Outside Your Normal Scope?

No single firm handles everything. At some point you may need an estate planning attorney to draft or update documents, an insurance specialist to evaluate coverage, or guidance on a business succession or sale. Ask how the advisor handles requests that fall outside their core services.

What a good answer looks like: A description of a network of vetted outside professionals the advisor works with regularly, combined with a clear statement that the advisor’s own team continues to oversee how that outside work fits into your overall plan, rather than simply handing you a name and stepping away.

What to watch for: An advisor who has no answer at all, or one who refers you out and never follows up to confirm the outside work was completed or how it affects the rest of your plan. A referral without follow-through recreates the same disconnect that integrated planning is meant to solve.

How to Evaluate the Answers You Get

• Specificity beats enthusiasm. A specific answer, with concrete detail, tells you more than reassuring language about “holistic planning” or “your unique situation.”
• Good advisors welcome scrutiny. Defensiveness about fees, credentials, or fiduciary status is itself useful information.
• Listen for who is actually in the room. If planning, investment, and tax questions each get routed to a different outside contact, that is a siloed structure, whatever the marketing materials say.
• Verify independently. Request the Form ADV Part 2A, confirm CFP® status at cfp.net, check CPA or EA licensure through the relevant state board or IRS directory, and check the NAPFA directory to confirm fee-only status (our own firm is listed there as a NAPFA member).

Why We Built Our Firm Around These Questions

These eight questions describe how we operate at United Financial Planning Group. We are a fee-only fiduciary firm: we are compensated only by our clients, and we do not accept commissions or other third-party compensation. Our financial planning team includes CFP® professionals, CPAs, and Enrolled Agents working together on the same plan, so that planning, investment, and tax decisions are made with the same information at the same time, rather than handed between separate firms. That is what we mean when we describe our approach as coordinated rather than siloed: it is not a slogan, it is the answer we would give to each of the eight questions above. We are also a member of NAPFA (the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors), whose fee-only and fiduciary membership standards match how we already work. Read more about what makes our approach different, or stop by our Hauppauge, NY financial advisor office to ask these questions in person.

Let’s Start With a Conversation

No sales pitch. No obligation. If you are interviewing advisors and want to talk through how our fee-only, coordinated approach works, reach out to schedule a conversation.

Disclosures

This article is provided for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute personalized financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. Descriptions of advisor compensation models, credentials, and regulatory standards reflect general industry practices and are provided for informational purposes; always verify current regulatory requirements and individual firm disclosures directly, including through an advisor’s Form ADV. References to fee-only status and fiduciary obligations are general in nature. Consult a qualified financial advisor and tax professional regarding your specific circumstances before making any decisions.