DUMBING IT DOWN

Chapter 22

The Certainty of the Half Informed

It generally starts in a pub, although it can just as easily begin around a barbecue, beside a football field or during one of those conversations where several men solve the problems of the nation without being troubled by access to all the facts. One bloke gradually takes control of the discussion, usually because he possesses the loudest voice, the most confidence and the least visible doubt. He does not so much offer an opinion as release a decision into the room, then waits for everyone else to recognise that the matter has been settled. A few people might nod because they agree, while others nod because arguing would take longer than the drink in front of them. By the time he reaches the part of the story he has been waiting to tell, authority has been established through the traditional method of speaking over anyone who looks likely to ask a useful question.

He knows someone who has done something clever, or perhaps he has done it himself, although the distinction often becomes blurred as the story gathers speed. He has paid no tax for years, claimed every expense known to man, bought property without using any of his own money and arranged his affairs so effectively that the Australian Taxation Office has apparently agreed to leave him alone. The arrangement is always simple once he explains it, which raises the awkward question of why thousands of accountants, lawyers and tax officers have spent their careers making such hard work of the subject. No one at the table asks that question because the story is travelling well and the answer might slow it down. Besides, there is always another round arriving, and a fresh beer has rescued more doubtful propositions than any legislation I have ever read.

The story rarely contains enough detail to be tested, but that does not weaken it in the eyes of the people listening. In many cases, the lack of detail makes it stronger because there are no inconvenient facts available to interfere with the conclusion. The business structure is not explained, the timing is uncertain, the private and business expenses have merged into one generous pile, and the accountant who supposedly approved everything remains safely absent. What survives is the result: less tax, more money, a better vehicle, another property or the satisfying belief that someone has discovered a door hidden from ordinary people. The rest is treated as bookkeeping, which is usually where I am expected to enter the story.

My client is often sitting somewhere nearby, listening while pretending not to be overly interested. He may begin with a little scepticism, particularly if he has not yet had enough to drink to accept every boast at face value, but then the story reaches the part where the bloke explains how much money he saved or how his accountant approved the whole arrangement. Doubt starts to fade because the possibility of an advantage is more appealing than the effort required to examine it. By the time another round has been ordered, the story is no longer something one man has claimed; it has become something people are doing. By the following morning, it has become something everyone is doing except my client, who is beginning to wonder why I have kept such useful information from him.

The possibility that the story is incomplete rarely competes well with the more satisfying thought that his accountant has been too conservative, too cautious or too slow to recognise a perfectly good opportunity. It is difficult to feel left behind without also deciding that someone should have prevented it, and the accountant is conveniently positioned for that role. I may have spent years helping the client structure businesses, preserve cash flow and avoid trouble, but none of that carries the immediate appeal of a stranger’s account of paying no tax. The bloke at the pub has provided a victory in three minutes, while I have generally provided conditions, qualifications and paperwork. In the contest between excitement and administration, administration has never attracted much of a crowd.

The client eventually arrives in my office carrying the story like newly discovered legislation. He settles into the chair, leans forward slightly and announces, “I was talking to a bloke at the pub,” with the sort of confidence that suggests the matter has already been researched, tested and approved by a panel of suitably loud men standing near the beer taps. I can usually tell from the way he begins that he is not bringing me a question so much as an answer he would like endorsed. There is often a small pause after the opening line, giving me the opportunity to show the proper level of interest before the revelation continues. I have learned not to sigh during that pause, although the thought has occasionally crossed my mind.

Whether the original orator failed to provide the full story, or whether the client sitting in front of me forgot, misunderstood or conveniently discarded the parts that did not support the conclusion, hardly matters by then. Somewhere between the first telling and the office chair, the details have been reduced to the version now being presented, and that version has already taken on the solidity of fact. The bloke at the pub may have mentioned that the arrangement only worked because of a particular structure, a specific set of circumstances or advice given after the full facts were considered. He may also have told the story exactly as my client now repeats it, leaving out the troublesome parts because they never suited his purpose in the first place. I have no way of knowing which man shortened the story, and by the time it reaches me the distinction changes nothing.

It is equally possible that the client heard the whole explanation and retained only the part that appealed to him. Human memory can be remarkably efficient when it is sorting information into what we want to hear and what can safely be left behind, particularly when someone else appears to have found an advantage we have missed. The saving, the deduction and the clever result travel well because they can be repeated in a sentence. The conditions are slower, less colourful and far more likely to be lost between the pub and my office. Neither possibility alters the conversation in front of me, because the story is what it is by then: incomplete perhaps, distorted almost certainly, but fully formed in the client’s mind and now presented as something I am expected to accept, explain or reproduce.

Those opening words tell me we are about to take a difficult journey, although there is no point revealing that too early. I sit back, listen and wait for the arrangement to show itself, trying not to interrupt before I understand which part of the story matters most to the client. Sometimes the concern is tax, sometimes it is a business structure, and sometimes it is simply the fear that another person has been allowed to win more easily. The client often gives me the conclusion first and the facts in whatever order they happen to occur to him, which means I have to reconstruct the transaction while also listening to the emotion underneath it. That is usually more useful than correcting the first error as soon as it appears, although patience has never been the most natural part of my character.

“He puts everything through the business,” the client might say, before listing cars, meals, holidays and anything else the other man has apparently persuaded his accountant to accept. There are already several problems sitting inside the statement, because paying for something from a business bank account does not automatically make it deductible, and private expenditure does not become business expenditure because the company name appears on the credit card. I also have no idea what the other accountant actually said, what records were provided or whether the accountant knows that his approval is now being quoted across a public bar. The phrase “puts it through the business” can mean anything from paying an account to claiming a deduction, and those are not the same thing. My client, however, has generally arrived believing that the act of payment has completed the legal analysis.

I begin asking the questions that should have been attached to the story before it left the pub. What business does the man operate, how are the vehicles used, what records are kept, has fringe benefits tax been considered, and did the supposed holiday have any genuine business purpose? It is also possible that the accountant merely processed what was presented and never offered the sweeping approval now attributed to him, although suggesting that possibility can sound like professional special pleading. The client watches the simple story being surrounded by qualifications and can become impatient before I have reached the second question. From his side of the desk, I appear to be turning a straightforward opportunity into a tax seminar. From mine, I am trying to discover whether there was ever an opportunity there at all.

Usually, the questions are treated as unnecessary complications because the bloke at the pub explained the arrangement clearly enough. My attempt to establish the facts can therefore look like a determination to make a simple matter difficult, particularly when every answer exposes another missing piece. The client may finally say, “He wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t allowed,” and the confidence behind the statement suggests that the mere existence of an action proves its legality. Plenty of people do things that are not allowed, and the fact that an action has occurred is never proof that it is lawful, sensible or likely to survive examination. The roads are full of speeding motorists, but no one has yet argued successfully that widespread speeding repealed the law.

Taxation seems to operate differently in the public imagination because repetition can create the appearance of permission. If enough people are believed to be claiming something, using a structure or moving money in a particular way, the practice begins to feel accepted even when no one in the conversation has checked it. Stories of people who were audited and required to repay the money do not circulate with the same enthusiasm, partly because failure is less enjoyable to recount and partly because the person involved becomes much quieter once the assessment arrives. The success story remains in the pub while the consequences are dealt with privately. That imbalance allows a doubtful practice to build an impressive reputation without ever having to produce references.

I explain that we do not know what the other man is doing, why he is doing it or whether the account bears any resemblance to his actual position. The client can hear that as an accusation against the man’s honesty, which shifts the conversation away from the technical point and towards whether I am being unfair. He might ask, “So you’re saying he’s lying?” and I will answer that I am saying we do not have enough information to know what he is doing. The distinction is important to me but rarely brings peace to the room, because the client has not come to discuss the reliability of second-hand evidence. He has already accepted the story and is now looking for the same result.

The half-informed rarely arrive seeking advice from a blank page. They arrive with a conclusion already written and ask a question because they want the adviser to place a professional signature underneath it. They have heard enough to believe an advantage is available but not enough to understand the conditions, risks or facts that might make it irrelevant to them. The missing information is not treated as something to be discovered; it becomes an obstacle introduced by the accountant to prevent a perfectly good idea from proceeding. Once the conversation reaches that point, explaining more can make me appear less informed rather than more, because the confident answer they heard first continues to sound cleaner than the qualified one I am giving them.

I saw versions of this throughout my working life, but it became more common as information became easier to obtain. The internet gave everyone access to more knowledge than any previous generation could have imagined, although access to information did not necessarily bring understanding with it. A short article, a Facebook post, a video or a confident comment could provide one fragment of a complicated subject, and that fragment would then be lifted out of its setting and carried into another situation. By the time it reached me, it had often lost the facts that originally gave it meaning. The result was not ignorance, which at least knows it needs help, but enough knowledge to resist the help being offered.

The most dangerous information was rarely completely false. Complete rubbish was easier to deal with because there was nothing inside it worth preserving, while a half-truth contained enough reality to resist immediate dismissal. There might genuinely be a deduction, exemption, concession or legal structure involved, and the person repeating it might even quote a correct threshold or rule. The problem was that the conditions had been removed, the limitations forgotten and the original facts replaced by the broad promise that anyone could do it. A fragment of law had become a licence, and the client arrived believing the only remaining task was for me to fill in the form.

A client would send me a link with a short message asking whether we could do the same thing. I would read the article or watch the video and try to work out where the claim came from, which part had been omitted and whether the presenter understood the subject or merely understood how to hold an audience. Sometimes the original idea was sound, but the headline had been written to attract attention rather than explain the law. On other occasions, a narrow rule had been stretched until it supposedly applied to almost everyone, provided they watched to the end and clicked on the appropriate link. The client had usually absorbed the promise before I began searching for the missing conditions.

The presenter often spoke with complete confidence from the front seat of a parked car and settled in forty seconds a question that had occupied lawyers, accountants and courts for decades. I had spent much of my adult life working with tax law, yet I still occasionally needed to stop, check the legislation, examine the facts and make sure I had not missed something. Apparently, I could have saved myself considerable time by purchasing a ring light and speaking more loudly. That observation amused me, but it also exposed a problem I could not joke away. Confidence presented well on a small screen, while careful professional judgement looked hesitant because it acknowledged that facts could change the answer.

The client did not see the absence of qualifications as a weakness because the person online sounded certain while I was saying things such as “it depends”, “subject to the circumstances” or “provided the conditions are met”. To the half-informed ear, certainty sounded like knowledge and qualification sounded like doubt. The person who ignored complexity therefore appeared more competent than the person who understood it, which was an unfortunate arrangement for anyone required to give responsible advice. I could have sounded more certain by leaving out the complications, but then the advice would have become as unreliable as the material I was correcting. The choice was between being heard and being accurate, and professional life did not always allow me to have both.

I would explain why the claim did not apply to the client’s circumstances, and the client would often respond with another link. It was as though the law operated according to the number of internet posts gathered in support of a preferred answer, and one more presenter might finally outvote the legislation. The exchange could continue for days, with every explanation producing another version of the same argument and one minor fact altered in the hope that the result would change. I might explain that an expense was private and therefore not deductible, only to be asked whether paying it through the company, placing a logo on it or changing the invoice description would make it business-related. By then, we were no longer examining the transaction; we were searching for words that might disguise it.

The belief underneath those questions was that the law cared more about the label than the substance. If the words could be rearranged cleverly enough, the transaction might be persuaded to become something it had never been. There were lawful choices available in taxation, and I spent a career helping clients use them, because there was nothing noble about paying more tax than the law required. I never accepted the idea that proper tax planning was improper merely because it reduced the amount payable. The line still had to be understood, because a legitimate structure used the law as it existed, while a fantasy assumed the law could be ignored because the client strongly preferred another result.

The more a client wanted the result, the harder the explanation became. A technical answer was no longer being measured against the legislation but against the emotional pull of what someone else appeared to have achieved. That other person was paying less tax, making more money or obtaining some advantage my client had missed, and the conversation began to carry the old pressure of keeping up with the Joneses. The question was not simply whether an arrangement worked; it was why another person seemed to be getting ahead while my client remained subject to the ordinary rules. Once envy, fear and pride entered the discussion, a calm explanation of conditions could feel like a very weak response to a much larger discomfort.

The Joneses were always doing well in stories told by other people. They had the new vehicle, the successful business, the investment properties and the clever accountant who knew all the tricks, while the less attractive parts of their affairs remained outside the frame. No one at the pub mentioned the debt, the unpaid tax, the second mortgage, the sleepless nights or the possibility that the impressive turnover was producing no profit. The new ute was visible in the car park, but the finance company’s interest in it did not show from across the road. My client heard the visible part of someone else’s story and compared it with every weakness in his own, which was never fair but still felt convincing.

That comparison often moved the conversation from tax into business. A client would arrive excited about a new venture because someone else appeared to be doing well, and the success would be measured by activity rather than by anything resembling a set of accounts. The shop was busy, the vehicles were new, the owner employed several people and social media showed a life of constant expansion. I would ask about margins, working capital, finance costs, payment terms and what happened when sales were lower than expected. Those questions sounded negative because they interrupted the clean line between the idea and the imagined reward, but they were the questions that decided whether the apparent success belonged to the owner or to everyone waiting to be paid.

The entrepreneurial mind needs a degree of optimism, and I never wanted to remove that from people who were prepared to build something. No one starts a business by concentrating entirely on the ways it might fail, and most ventures require the owner to believe in something that does not yet exist. I understood that because I had started businesses, invested in ideas and backed myself when certainty was impossible. I had worn rose-coloured glasses often enough to recognise both their appeal and their usefulness. They can provide the courage required to take a first step, but they become dangerous when they are mistaken for clear vision.

The trouble came when the glasses were never removed. Optimism could help someone begin, but it was not a substitute for capital, customers, margins, cash flow or the willingness to confront unwelcome facts. A client would present a business idea with great enthusiasm, explaining that the market was enormous, the competition weak and customers apparently waiting for someone to offer exactly what he intended to sell. The evidence of demand often consisted of friends and family saying it was a wonderful idea, which was encouraging without being particularly bankable. People are generous with support when they are not required to hand over money, and plenty of businesses have opened on the strength of customers who never quite arrived.

The more useful question was whether enough people would pay enough money often enough to sustain the business. That question lacked the warmth of encouragement, but the answer mattered considerably more once rent, wages, suppliers and tax began arriving on schedule. The idea itself might have been good, useful and even needed, because businesses do not fail only when their products are foolish. The world is full of things people agree should exist but are not prepared to pay enough to sustain. Agreement around a barbecue can create confidence, but it does not necessarily create a market.

Other businesses failed because they began undercapitalised. They had enough money to open the doors, print the signs and make the first purchases, but not enough to survive the time required for the business to establish itself. Undercapitalisation was often dismissed as a temporary issue that early sales would solve, while suppliers would offer terms, customers would pay deposits, social media would provide free marketing and the owner would manage without wages until the money began flowing. Every gap had an answer, but most answers depended on something happening exactly as hoped. The certainty came first, and the facts were expected to fall into line behind it.

This was the “think it, therefore it is” style of business planning, where the idea felt so complete inside the owner’s head that the outside world was assumed to be waiting for instructions. Customers existed because the owner could imagine them, profit existed because a spreadsheet had produced it, and cash flow existed because invoices would supposedly be paid on time by people who had never previously shown much enthusiasm for doing so. The plan was often presented with figures, which gave imagination the appearance of evidence. Once a dollar sign and two decimal places appeared beside an assumption, it seemed to gain a professional dignity it had not possessed when spoken aloud. I had seen enough spreadsheets to know they could be made to confess almost anything.

A spreadsheet is wonderfully agreeable because it accepts whatever assumptions are entered and produces a total without asking whether enthusiasm has been doing the work of evidence. Increase sales, reduce expenses, postpone the need for staff and assume every customer pays promptly, and almost any doubtful venture can become profitable before lunch. The spreadsheet does not object because it has no house to lose, and it does not wake at three in the morning wondering how wages or the next tax instalment will be paid. It merely continues adding the numbers it has been given. My role was to make it less cooperative by changing the assumptions until the figures resembled a world people actually lived in.

I would reduce the projected sales, add the costs that had been overlooked and allow for the possibility that the business would take longer to establish. The client might then accuse me of concentrating on the worst-case scenario, although I was usually doing nothing of the sort. The worst case involved failure, insolvency and the loss of assets that had taken years to build, while I was generally considering a moderately disappointing outcome. That was far more common and often more dangerous because it encouraged the owner to continue for another month, borrow a little more and believe success remained just beyond the next corner. Catastrophe eventually announces itself, but slow underperformance can live for years on hope, borrowed money and the promise of one good month.

The client could see my questions as an attack on the dream, particularly once the idea had become more than a proposal. There is a point where a business venture becomes part of the owner’s identity, and doubting it can then sound like doubting the person even when the adviser is trying to protect that person from the consequences. Questions about capital can be heard as questions about courage, while concerns about demand can sound like an accusation that the client lacks ability. Advice to delay may be interpreted as proof that the accountant does not understand entrepreneurship, or perhaps does not want the client to succeed. By then, the numbers are carrying emotions they were never designed to hold.

That made the conversation much harder than the figures suggested. I was no longer discussing margins and cash flow alone but dealing with pride, hope, fear, competition and the client’s need to believe something about himself. Accounting was never simply about numbers, because the numbers were where the evidence landed after people made decisions, avoided decisions, justified decisions or decided that wanting something badly enough was almost the same as proving it would work. The real professional task was understanding what created those numbers and what they were likely to become. That required judgement, pattern recognition and a willingness to tell someone that the story they had accepted might not survive contact with reality.

I did not always handle those conversations perfectly, and pretending otherwise would turn this into the wrong sort of book. I could be impatient, especially when the same argument returned after being answered several times, and there were occasions when my frustration entered the room before I had properly controlled it. The speed of my mind did not always help because, while the client was explaining the first part of the idea, I could already see several later problems and the rescue work that might eventually be required. I sometimes responded to the future difficulty before the client had finished describing the present one. From my side, I was saving time; from theirs, I may simply have looked as though I was not listening.

The temptation was to explain everything at once because I wanted the client to understand the pattern that made the answer clear to me. The explanation would grow branches, and each branch would lead to another issue, qualification or possible consequence. I could see the client becoming overwhelmed or merely waiting for me to stop so the original request for approval could be repeated. Their eyes might glaze, not because they were foolish but because I had given them the thought at the speed it arrived in my own head. What seemed connected and obvious to me could sound like a lecture to someone who believed he had asked a simple question.

That was where I had to dumb it down, not by changing the answer but by reducing the route I had taken to reach it. I would cut off the branches, slow the explanation and identify the point the client most needed to understand, even when part of me wanted to show how every piece fitted together. Sometimes that point was simply that the proposal could not be done in the way suggested because the law did not permit it, the figures did not support it or the risk was too far beyond the likely reward. Reducing the answer did not always make it easier for me, because the full thought felt more honest and complete. Still, there was little value in delivering an explanation the room could not absorb.

Even a simple answer created its own problem. If I explained too much, I was accused of complicating the issue, but if I reduced the conclusion to a clear no, I could be accused of being dismissive or unwilling to help. The client wanted the clean certainty offered by the bloke at the pub or the person online, while I was giving a judgement shaped by conditions, experience and professional responsibility. That judgement was necessarily less entertaining and often less satisfying. It also carried my name, which made me reluctant to trade accuracy for applause.

There were several forms of “no” available to an accountant, and experience taught me when each one was likely to fail. The first was gentle and explanatory, allowing the client room to understand the issue without feeling embarrassed or defeated. The second was firmer and usually became necessary when the first no was treated as the opening position in a negotiation. The third arrived when the client had stopped seeking advice and was trying to recruit me into an arrangement already decided upon. That final response was shorter, but it still required me to explain that I would not prepare documents or lodge returns on a basis I believed to be wrong.

That was sometimes the point where the relationship changed. The conversation could be twisted until I became the unreasonable person, too conservative, too frightened of the Tax Office or too old-fashioned to understand how modern business operated. There were conservative accountants, and the profession had occasionally earned its reputation for finding obstacles where others saw opportunities. I never wanted to become the man who could locate a tax risk in a sausage sandwich and spend twenty minutes explaining it. I liked ideas, respected people prepared to take risks and spent much of my career helping clients find a lawful way to do something rather than producing a list of reasons they could not.

There was still a difference between taking a calculated risk and closing your eyes before running at a wall. A calculated risk recognised the wall, examined its height, considered whether there was a way around it and understood what would happen if the attempt failed. The half-informed version announced that the wall was probably not there because someone else claimed to have passed through it, then treated anyone pointing towards the bricks as negative. My role was to mention the wall, which sometimes made me appear responsible for placing it there. I could see the collision coming and still become the most irritating person in the room for saying so.

That was the recurring frustration of the work. I was often trying to help people avoid the very thing they later accused me of failing to prevent, but a warning has little emotional appeal when it stands between a person and the result they want. The big mouth at the pub did not carry that burden because he could release the idea, finish his drink and leave before the consequences arrived. The person on social media could record another video and move to the next subject without ever meeting the person who acted on the advice. Neither had to sit with the client when the assessment came, the business failed or the bank began asking questions.

I had to remain behind and reconcile the story with what had actually happened. The certainty belonged to someone else, while the rescue work arrived on my desk after the person who created the certainty had disappeared. I might have to negotiate with the Tax Office, prepare revised figures, explain the position to a bank or help the client decide what could still be saved. By then, the story had changed again, and the original confidence was replaced by anger, embarrassment or a selective memory of the advice given. The pub version had been simple because it ended before the consequences began.

There were times when a client eventually accepted my advice before anything went wrong. The certainty would loosen, another question would be asked and the conversation would move from defence towards genuine thought. Those moments were satisfying because no one needed to win, and the client did not have to admit foolishness while I did not have to prove I was the cleverest person in the room. The idea simply became better informed. It might proceed in a different form, be delayed until the capital was available or be abandoned before real damage occurred.

Other clients appeared to accept the advice and then proceeded exactly as they intended. Months later, when the predicted problem emerged, the original conversation could return in a form I barely recognised, beginning with the claim, “I thought you said it would be all right.” I might remember the meeting clearly, including the warning, the explanation and the follow-up email recording what I had advised. Producing the email did not always help because proof can feel like aggression when someone is already facing the consequences of a decision. The client who once thought I was too cautious could now say I had not been forceful enough.

They might tell me that I should have stopped them, as though an accountant carried some hidden authority to confiscate cheque books and stand guard outside lending institutions. Logically, I knew the limits of my responsibility because I could advise, warn, document the risk and refuse to participate, but the final decision still belonged to the client. Emotionally, it was not always so easy because responsibility had been part of my working life for so long. I could still search for the sentence I might have used, the example I might have given or the harder tone that could have broken through. Being right after the event offered very little comfort when I was helping deal with the damage.

That habit fed the dull roar underneath the competence. I could appear calm, begin fixing the problem and work through the consequences while another argument continued inside my head about why they had not listened and whether I had failed to explain it properly. More painfully, I wondered why I continued to feel that the collision was evidence of my failure when I had spent so much time pointing towards the wall. Depression did not always arrive dramatically or announce itself as anything separate from the work. It often lived inside those repeated efforts to function, repair and remain useful while frustration and self-doubt gathered behind them.

From the outside, I was solving the problem and doing what I had always done. Inside, I was bouncing my head against the same brick wall and wondering why experience had not taught me to stop. The logical answer was that the decision belonged to the client, but logic did not remove the sense of responsibility once the consequences were sitting in front of me. Perhaps that was part of the price of being useful for too long, although even that explanation can become another way of making myself sound more noble than I was. I also hated being ignored, hated cleaning up avoidable messes and did not always separate concern for the client from the irritation of having been proved right.

The reason I continued was that sometimes people did listen. A business was not started, a property was not purchased, a deduction was not claimed or a structure was changed before damage occurred. Those successes were difficult to see because prevention leaves very little evidence, and there is no wreckage to stand beside or dramatic rescue story to tell. Life simply continues in a more ordinary form: the house remains secure, the tax debt never arises and the savings are still there. That quiet continuation is precisely what the advice was meant to achieve, although it rarely receives the attention given to a clever story in a pub.

The half-informed certainty offered a much better story. It promised the hidden advantage, the clever shortcut and the satisfaction of knowing something others had missed, while proper advice arrived with conditions, paperwork and commercial discipline. It also carried the irritating suggestion that the laws of arithmetic continued to apply even to entrepreneurs. That rarely produced a tale worth repeating over a drink. I occasionally envied the ease with which certainty could be sold, particularly because the person offering it carried none of the professional burden that came with being correct.

Information could be repeated without responsibility, but understanding included context, limitation and consequence. That made it heavier to carry and much harder to deliver across a pub table, where the shortest answer usually had the best chance of surviving. The half-informed had gathered enough information to sound convincing but not enough understanding to recognise doubt. Complete ignorance might still ask a genuine question, while real expertise usually recognised the boundaries of its knowledge. Half-knowledge sat between them, protected by confidence and inclined to treat every correction as another opinion rather than an improvement in understanding.

I was not immune from that human failing, and it would be too easy to write this chapter as though every half-informed person had always been sitting on the other side of my desk. There were subjects outside my knowledge where I had probably accepted a fragment, repeated it and felt certain until someone better informed explained what I had missed. The difference I tried to maintain was a willingness to be corrected, although I am sure I did not always manage even that with grace. Knowledge should make certainty harder because the more deeply a person understands a subject, the more conditions, exceptions and consequences become visible. Unfortunately, that can make the expert sound hesitant while the amateur appears completely sure, which does not help when the room is choosing whom to believe.

By the time retirement was approaching, I was tired of the recurring performance. A client would introduce the latest fragment, and my mind would race ahead through the familiar conversation, anticipating how the first explanation would be resisted and how someone else’s supposed success would be used to suggest that my caution was the real problem. I also knew I would still try to bring the discussion back to the facts because the part of me trained to test an idea had never learned to switch off. I could feel tired, frustrated and privately annoyed, but the moment a half-built proposal was placed in front of me, my mind began pulling at it. Retirement might remove the office eventually, but it was unlikely to quiet that instinct.

The challenge remained deciding how much of the thought could safely enter the room. Too little and I failed to provide proper advice, but too much and the client felt overwhelmed, criticised or spoken down to. I had to make the explanation smaller without weakening the truth, reducing the route to language the client could hear even when part of me resented that the full thought had once again been edited before it was allowed to exist. Sometimes the best I could say was that the other person’s arrangement might be correct for circumstances we did not know, but that did not make it correct for the client in front of me. At other times, I put the figures on one page and allowed arithmetic to deliver the warning with less risk of sounding personal.

There were also times when nothing worked. The client left unconvinced and found someone else prepared to provide the answer he wanted, because there was always someone willing to sell certainty if it came with a commission, an upfront fee or a seminar package. My responsibility was not to compete with the performance but to make sure reality had been properly represented before the decision was made. That was easier to accept in theory than in practice, particularly when I could see where the chosen path was leading. Letting someone make a mistake after being warned still felt uncomfortably close to watching the collision.

Entrepreneurs will always wear rose-coloured glasses, and perhaps they need to because very little would be attempted without some willingness to believe in a future others cannot yet see. The danger lies in mistaking those glasses for clear vision, allowing rose tint to turn possibility into inevitability, enthusiasm into evidence and turnover into profit. There will also always be another Jones who appears to be doing better, with the larger business, the cleverer structure, the newer vehicle and an accountant who apparently lets him do anything he likes. His debts, unpaid suppliers, tax arrangements and private fear will remain outside the story, while the visible success is passed around and polished a little further. Someone listening will begin to wonder why the same advantage has not found its way to him.

Sooner or later, another client will arrive carrying the certainty of the half-informed, convinced that what someone else claims to have done must be available to him as well. The irresistible force of enthusiasm will move towards the immovable object of the law, and the person trying to explain the collision may once again be treated as the only one in the room who does not understand. Reality will wait without needing to raise its voice, because the figures, the law and the consequences will speak eventually. The harder question is how much fantasy will be allowed to proceed before anyone is prepared to listen. By then, the bloke at the pub will probably be telling a different story to a different table, and another round will already be on its way.