{"id":45929,"date":"2025-11-01T11:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isafespend.com\/?p=45929"},"modified":"2025-11-01T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:57:10","slug":"george-kinders-key-to-finding-and-being-a-true-fiduciary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isafespend.com\/?p=45929","title":{"rendered":"George Kinder\u2019s Key To Finding\u2014And Being\u2014A True Fiduciary"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sitting at a kitchen table, George Kinder asked a question of a young woman. Her response opened the door to a decision that could genuinely transform her life. She might reconsider having kids after all.<\/p>\n

George Kinder has helped transform the world of financial planning without a single quantitative calculation, focusing instead on finding the right questions. His legendary 3 Questions exercise has helped many connect meaning to money, but now he\u2019s asking even bigger questions, and he\u2019s asking them of institutions as well as individuals.<\/p>\n

I recently had an opportunity to speak with George about his FIAT (Fiduciary In All Things) initiative, which wonders what the world would look like if the fiduciary requirement for financial advisors, to put their clients\u2019 interests ahead of their own, had universal adoption beyond the domain of wealth management. <\/p>\n

And whether Kinder\u2019s questions are destined to change the world or not, they are certainly extending their reach beyond financial planning and into companies (especially B corps) and industries that may be considering the F-word (fiduciary) and its application for the first time.<\/p>\n

Yet at the tail end of our conversation, an insight emerged that wasn\u2019t an intentional part of our interview, but that may just be the key to finding\u2014and being\u2014a true fiduciary. It\u2019s the counterintuitive, countercultural notion of self-forgetfulness, and it\u2019s my goal to help you understand its application, both as a financial advisor and as a client in search of (a better) one.<\/p>\n

Being A True Fiduciary<\/h2>\n

The letter of the law requires true financial advisors, beholden to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, to put the best interest of the client ahead of their own, as fiduciaries. This was deemed a necessity after the dust settled from the Great Depression, but considering that financial advisors are still deemed one of the least trustworthy of all professionals in the 2020s, methinks we need to revisit the spirit of the law behind this 18-point Scrabble word\u2014fiduciary.<\/p>\n

For too many, the fiduciary duty has turned into a regulatory box to be checked\u2014like, we could defend this particular recommendation in a court of law\u2014and that\u2019s unfortunate, because it\u2019s the deeper essence of this word that opens a door to a new level of interaction between advisor and client. <\/p>\n

You see, fiduciary isn\u2019t just legal compliance; it\u2019s practiced self-forgetfulness. As an advisor, this means you\u2019re not thinking about yourself, your ego, your AUM, your commission, or anybody else\u2019s perception of your work in that moment. You\u2019re just thinking about the client.<\/p>\n

This leads to a multidimensional approach to listening and learning, a skill that Kinder notes is a virtual superpower relative to cognition slowed by the effort of thought. (This is one of the reasons, by the way, that Kinder rarely takes notes in a client\u2019s presence, because he wants to be fully present.)<\/p>\n

And while the notion of self-forgetfulness might seem anathema in 2025\u2019s it\u2019s-all-about-you twist on self-improvement, this notion has long been the domain of some of the world\u2019s great thinkers:<\/p>\n