This article addresses the following key points:

• Uncovering unspoken attitudes can provide valuable insights into a client's motivations.
• Some firms use a "life planning" approach to probe client attitudes toward wealth, enabling them to deal with qualitative factors that might be missed by traditional goals-oriented planning.
• Life-planning advocates believe that failing to uncover a client's underlying attitudes and goals can lead to inappropriate portfolios.
• Advisers should be aware, however, that life-planning techniques are inappropriate for some advisers and clients.