Last week, a reader reflected that one of the worst pieces of advice he ever received was to ‘only trust your own instincts’. We all have our biases and are more prone to groupthink than we’d like to believe.
Taking advice from people in your team and external advisers is smart, but few of us really value the views of people who always agree with our thinking.
There is another angle here.
Opinions and lazy thinking are in high supply. However, good advice is scarce and will sometimes take the form of contrarian views that are out of favour.
A recent article in the business media highlighted how political correctness and cancel culture have stunted debate and poses a hidden threat for investors. It argues that politics are skewing investor decisions away from facts and making it hard for advisers to voice their true opinions without the risk of being ostracised.
It’s not politically correct, for example, to be questioning the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing industry. However, some highly credentialled people are now doing just that.
Tariq Fancy, the former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager that has championed sustainable investing, recently launched a scathing attack on the ESG industry.
Pointedly, he says that it’s not the risks that we’re talking about that he worries about. It’s the ones we’re not talking about.
It raises an interesting question. Do you want good advice, or do you want advice that is politically right? Instinctively, we’d like both, but the former is the one we need.
What we all value are advisers who challenge us with a different view and bring numbers and facts to the table.
Until next week.