Scope versus advice

The solutions they suggest are usually bad. Implementing them is not likely to lead to a satisfied customer because if they had the expertise to solve their problems, they would have already. 
This is exemplified in really specific scope boundaries that a client may set, and refuse to negotiate.

A client that tells us exactly what kind of cover they want, how much of it, and for how much money, can lay a trap for us. Sometimes the trap is garnished with a very specific exclusion “I don’t want any of that income protection stuff.”

These are traps where they are exercising a prejudice, or belief with insufficient information, without considering factors about which the client may be ignorant. Slavishly recording such scope limits without challenging them looks like a highway to hell.

People with good reasons for their scope limits are usually happy to talk about them. But people who become very defensive and specific without offering information about their reasons for the limits are revealing that they are quite judgmental and defensive.  Not the kind of client you want to be navigating a complaint with. That complaint may well come, because defensive people don’t like taking responsibility for their own actions. But you, being the ‘adviser’ may be in danger because very, very, specific scope definitions leave little room for advice.