“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

Alice asks this question when she finds herself at a crossroads in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Cheshire Cat asks her where she wants to get to.

“I don’t much care where,” Alice replies.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” says the Cat.

It is one of the most revealing conversations in literature.

And it captures a challenge I see in financial services.

We are often very good at helping people decide how to get somewhere. We know how to calculate returns, compare mortgages, structure pensions, assess risk and recommend financial products.

But how often do we begin by discovering where the person actually wants to go?

The map is not the destination

Imagine Alice sitting across the table from a financial adviser.

The adviser has excellent products, sophisticated tools and years of professional experience. The adviser can explain every available route, calculate the costs and identify the most efficient solution.

But Alice has not yet explained what she wants her journey to be about.

Does she want security? Freedom? Adventure? A home of her own? Time to care for someone she loves? The opportunity to start a new chapter?

Without that understanding, even excellent advice may solve the wrong problem.

This is not because the financial adviser lacks expertise. It is because expertise is most useful when it serves a purpose the customer genuinely values.

Before we help someone choose the right financial path, we need to discover what they want that path to make possible.

Every client arrives with a different story

Consider three people who are approaching retirement.

On paper, they may look remarkably similar. They are the same age, have comparable incomes and possess similar pension savings.

Yet their stories may be completely different.

The first wants to travel. After decades of work, she wants the freedom to explore places she has only read about.

The second wants to spend more time with his grandchildren and help his daughter build a secure future for her family.

The third wants to continue working, but on his own terms. He has an idea for a business and sees retirement as an opportunity to reinvent himself.

Three people. Similar financial circumstances. Three different visions of a good life.

A financial plan must take account of the numbers, constraints and risks. But understanding these aspirations can help the adviser explore which options are most relevant to each person.

The financial question is no longer simply, “How much income will you need?”

It becomes, “What do you want your next chapter to look like, and what financial choices could help you move towards it?”

That is a very different conversation.

The story behind the numbers

I have spent years exploring the stories people tell about their lives, their work and the futures they want to create.

One thing has become clear to me: people are not simply collections of facts, figures and preferences.

They are protagonists in stories that are still unfolding.

They have ambitions they have not yet pursued, challenges they are trying to overcome and possibilities they may not yet have imagined.

Sometimes they know exactly what they want. Sometimes they are uncertain. Sometimes they arrive with a financial question because it is easier to articulate than the deeper question underneath it.

A person may ask whether they can afford to retire early when the real issue is that their current work no longer gives them a sense of purpose.

A business owner may ask how to invest their wealth when the deeper question concerns the legacy they want to leave.

A young couple may ask about a mortgage when what matters most is creating a home where they can build their life together.

The financial question is real. But it may not be the whole story.

That is why I believe the ability to discover a client’s story should be central to financial services.

From giving answers to asking better questions

The Cheshire Cat offers Alice no financial plan. He does something more fundamental: he asks a question that makes her think about her destination.

Financial professionals can do the same.

Instead of immediately explaining the available products, we can begin with questions such as:

• What would you most like to make possible in your life over the next five or ten years?
• What matters more to you than it might appear from your financial situation?
• What are you hoping to protect, change or achieve?
• If your financial circumstances allowed you more freedom, what would you want to do with it?
• What would a successful next chapter look like for you?

These are not substitutes for technical analysis, suitability assessments or responsible financial advice. They are ways to understand the purpose that the advice is meant to serve.

The answers may reveal that the customer values security above maximum returns, flexibility above a particular lifestyle, or time above additional material possessions.

They may also reveal competing ambitions that require careful discussion and realistic trade-offs.

That is where the financial professional’s expertise becomes especially valuable: helping people translate what matters to them into informed, feasible financial choices.

Your client is the protagonist. You are the guide.

There is another lesson in Alice’s encounter with the Cheshire Cat.

The Cat does not take over Alice’s journey. He does not decide what her destination should be.

He helps her recognise the importance of choosing one.

I believe this is a powerful way to think about the role of financial services.

The customer is the protagonist of their own life. The financial professional is a knowledgeable guide who can help them understand the terrain, recognise the obstacles, evaluate alternatives and make better-informed decisions.

The guide brings expertise. The protagonist brings the purpose.

When these two contributions come together, financial services can become more than a transaction. It can become a meaningful partnership in helping people shape their futures.

This is also why storytelling matters to customer experience and business strategy. Discovering the customer’s story can help an organisation understand what its services need to make possible, rather than beginning and ending with the products it has available.

So, where do your clients want to go?

Alice’s question has stayed with readers for generations because it applies to much more than a journey through Wonderland.

It applies whenever we must make a decision about direction.

And few decisions are more closely connected to the lives we want to lead than those involving money.

What if every financial conversation began with genuine curiosity about the customer’s destination?

What if financial professionals were trained not only to explain products, but also to discover aspirations?

What if financial organisations designed their customer experiences around the lives people want to create?

I believe this is one of the great opportunities for financial services: connecting financial expertise with the human stories that give money its meaning.

At Telling the Financial Story, I help financial-services organisations explore how storytelling can reveal customer aspirations, deepen relationships and create more meaningful experiences.

Because before we can help someone choose the right way forward, we need to understand where they hope to go.

The question is not only, “What financial solution does your client need?”

It is also, “What story is your client trying to live?”

I would love to explore that question with you.

Peter de Kuster
Founder, Telling the Financial Story
Stories that Change Financial Lives

Email: peterdekuster2023@gmail.com

Let’s discover the story behind the financial question.