I know that drawing lessons from dentists might seem odd for someone who supports sole practitioner accountants as I do. But bear with me.
A recent visit to the dentist inspired me to suggest that many UK accountants would run very different practices if they borrowed a few ideas from dentists.
Not because dentists are better business people, but because they seem to have developed a much clearer understanding of the value of professional judgement.
Read on and see if you agree that dentists may have more to teach us than you might previously have thought about boundaries, client expectations, how expertise is communicated and, perhaps most importantly, knowing when to offer advice and when not to.
Clients accept commercial fees
I can’t be the first person to have realised its more expensive than ever to visit the dentist. And recently I needed a filling – which is a (common) procedure I’ve had to ensure for many years. I didn’t know what the ‘going rate’ was. And still haven’t checked. What I was charged was in line with the amount my wife guessed afterwards – using her own experiences (sadly she’s needed far more dental work than me over the years).
Several friends have commented recently how much it now costs to go to the dentist.
In each case, their long-standing dentist is approaching retirement and they’ve started looking elsewhere. Almost without exception, they’re surprised by the fees quoted by prospective new dentists.
What’s interesting isn’t the increase in price. It’s how people explain it.
In most cases their assumption is that their old dentist had simply fallen behind the market. They feel fortunate to have paid below-commercial rates for so long. They aren’t looking for another older dentist who might also be undercharging. Quite the opposite. They expect a newer dentist to be up to date, using modern techniques and likely to be around for years to come.
Not one of them has suggested going back to their retiring dentist and pointing out that he’d been charging too little.
It made me wonder whether there’s a lesson here for accountants.
Many practitioners have kept their fees artificially low for years. They worry about upsetting loyal clients or feel uncomfortable charging what their work is really worth. Yet when they eventually retire, those same clients usually discover they can’t replace the service for anything like the same price.
The only person who loses out during those years of undercharging is the accountant.
It’s about more than pricing
The comparison with dentists becomes even more interesting when you look beyond fees.
Dentists don’t apologise for their pricing, and they don’t feel obliged to justify every recommendation. Patients expect to pay for professional judgement. They understand that expertise has value, even before any treatment begins.
Many accountants, despite often having a far greater commercial impact on their clients’ lives, still hesitate when discussing fees. They discount too readily, over-explain their value or quietly absorb work that was never included in the original agreement.
The difference isn’t technical competence.
It’s positioning.
A dental practice is built around clear structure and professional boundaries. From the waiting room to the treatment chair, every part of the experience reinforces confidence and authority. There is a process. There is an order to events. You don’t arrive halfway through an appointment and renegotiate the treatment plan.
Many accountancy practices operate very differently.
Clients email whenever something occurs to them. “Quick questions” become lengthy conversations. New pieces of work are quietly absorbed into the relationship without anyone stopping to decide whether they should be commissioned separately. Over time, both profitability and enjoyment of the practice begin to erode.
Dentists charge for diagnosis
One of the biggest differences is that dentists separate diagnosis from treatment.
You pay for the examination. You then decide whether to proceed with the recommended work. Identifying the problem is recognised as valuable professional expertise in its own right.
Accountants often do the opposite.
We identify the issue, explain the opportunities, outline possible solutions and only then try to charge for carrying out the work.
By that point we’ve often given away much of the thinking that differentiates us.
When I’m working with an accountant who’s struggling with fees, the conversation rarely starts with the pricing itself.
The question I usually ask is:
Where does your client first experience your expertise?
If the answer is “during the free conversation before they become a client”, we’ve usually identified part of the problem.
Good advisers know what not to recommend
My recent visit to the dentist reinforced another lesson.
I’ve been seeing her for several years and this was the first time she’d recommended anything beyond routine care.
What struck me wasn’t the treatment itself. It was what she hadn’t done over the previous years.
She offers all sorts of treatments, yet she’s never felt the need to tell me about every one of them. She raised one issue because it was relevant, she judged the timing was right and, I suspect, she thought I’d be receptive.
It made me wonder whether accountants sometimes fall into one of two traps.
Some mistake being proactive for taking clients through every tax planning idea, relief, planning opportunity or additional service they can think of. Every meeting becomes a catalogue of possibilities.
Others make the opposite mistake. They stay firmly within compliance, keep their heads down and never raise opportunities that really could make a difference.
Neither extreme feels quite right.
Most experienced accountants can identify opportunities. The harder skill is judging which opportunity is worth discussing, with which client, at what moment.
That usually starts with asking better questions.
The questions we ask reveal what we’ve seen before, the patterns we’ve recognised and the issues we know tend to matter. In many ways, our questions demonstrate our experience before our answers do.
That’s one reason experienced advisers and mentors often ask such thoughtful questions. They aren’t working through a mental checklist. They’re trying to understand which conversation is worth having today.
I’m beginning to think restraint is one of the most underrated parts of giving good advice.
Clients don’t need us to demonstrate everything we know. They need us to recommend what genuinely matters, when it matters.
The common thread
The common thread here that we can all learn from all relates to professional judgement.
Dentists are comfortable charging commercial fees because they value diagnosis as much as treatment. They create clear boundaries around how they work. They don’t feel obliged to justify every recommendation or explain every possible option.
They trust their judgement about what matters most for the patient sitting in front of them.
Perhaps accountants should have the same confidence.
We have knowledge our clients don’t possess. We spot risks they can’t see and opportunities they wouldn’t recognise. The value lies not simply in what we know, but in knowing when to raise an issue, how to explain it and when to leave it for another day.
Professionalism isn’t demonstrated by saying yes to everything, giving away every idea or making yourself permanently available.
It’s demonstrated through judgement.
If your practice were a dental surgery, how much of what you currently tolerate simply wouldn’t exist?
That may be the most useful question of all.
