Professional qualifications can support the technical foundations for a career in paraplanning, but is success really about remembering facts or knowing how to apply them? Chartered Paraplanner – Peter Best, reflects on the balance between knowledge, judgement and the ability to find the right answers for clients.
Throughout my professional exams, I often found myself thinking – why do I need to remember this? If I needed to know it at work, I’d just look it up!
I’m sure I’m not the only paraplanner who’s thought that while trying to memorise legislation, tax rules, calculations and seemingly endless technical details.
But it raises an interesting question.
Are we sometimes confusing the ability to remember information with the ability to understand and apply it?
Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe professional qualifications are important. I’ve spent years studying for both academic and professional qualifications, and I know how essential a sound foundation of technical knowledge is to good paraplanning.
But there’s a difference between knowing something and being able to recite it from memory.
What happens when the exams are over?
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate through my work is that being a good paraplanner doesn’t mean having every answer immediately to hand.
Financial planning is complicated. Legislation changes, tax allowances are amended, and clients rarely fit neatly into the examples we encounter in textbooks.
Even when I’m reasonably confident I know the answer to something, I’ll often check it anyway.
Not because I don’t understand it, but because I want to make sure I’m applying the right rules to the right circumstances.
If I’m dealing with a particularly complex case, I don’t see anything wrong with going back to the legislation, reading HMRC’s guidance or checking something with a provider.
In fact, I’d be more concerned about someone confidently giving an answer from memory without considering whether it’s still correct.
Of course, there’s a limit to that argument. If we didn’t have a good foundation of technical knowledge, we wouldn’t necessarily know what to look for in the first place, and perhaps more importantly, we might not recognise when the answer we’ve found doesn’t seem quite right.
Sometimes you can look at a case and immediately recognise that something needs further investigation, even if you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is.
Perhaps a calculation doesn’t look right, or a recommendation makes sense on paper but doesn’t quite fit the client’s circumstances.
It’s that willingness to question things, rather than simply accept the first answer, that I think makes a real difference to the quality of our work.
What should exams be testing?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with expecting paraplanners to demonstrate their technical knowledge. We need to understand the rules before we can apply them properly.
But I do wonder whether we sometimes place too much emphasis on how much information someone can remember, rather than what they can actually do with it.
To be fair, many qualifications already recognise this, particularly at Levels 6 and 7, where candidates are expected to analyse situations, consider different approaches and explain their reasoning.
When I was studying for my LIBF Level 6 qualifications, we were encouraged to develop our own recommendations, as long as we could justify them.
There wasn’t necessarily one correct answer. What mattered was being able to explain why we’d chosen a particular approach and demonstrate that we’d considered the alternatives.
I really enjoyed that aspect of the assessments because it reflected something I’ve come to appreciate in practice.
Two paraplanners can look at the same situation and reach different conclusions, without either necessarily being wrong. What’s important is that they’ve considered the alternatives, can justify their recommendations and, ultimately, that those recommendations are suitable for the client.
I’d like to see more emphasis on that kind of thinking throughout professional education.
There’s always more to learn
I’ve always enjoyed learning, and if anything, the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realised just how much I still don’t know!
But that’s one of the things I enjoy about paraplanning. There’s always something new to investigate, another approach to consider or a question that makes me think differently about something I thought I understood.
Qualifications give us the technical foundations, but it’s how we use that knowledge that matters.
I don’t think being a good paraplanner means knowing the answer to every question. It’s about understanding enough to recognise when something needs investigating, knowing where to look and being able to work out what it actually means for the client.
After all, there’s nothing wrong with looking something up. The important thing is knowing what to do with the answer when you’ve found it.
Main image: note taking, study, vadim-bozhko-lbO1iCnbTW0-unsplash
