'I met with a financial representative who was not aware that AT&T was the shortened form of American Telephone and Telegraph'

"A professional is professional in all important areas of his occupation." (Photo subject is a model.)

Dear Quentin,

With respect to your response to this letter ("My husband and I are retired. Our financial adviser, who is in his 30s, called us 'you guyses.' Is that unprofessional?") I am in agreement with the couple who wrote in, wondering whether they should seek out a new adviser. A professional is professional in all important areas of his occupation.

Communication matters. Respect is important. They are the ingredients to a successful business. Knowing the "where and when" is very important. My wife would reel at the greeting, "Hey," she would say my name is not, "Hey." I met with a financial representative who was not aware that AT&T was the shortened form of American Telephone and Telegraph.

So where do you draw the line?

Old-fashioned Couple

Related: 'They are relentless': A scammer is trying to change the email on my empty Robinhood account. What do they have to gain?

You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions at qfottrell@marketwatch.com. The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.

"Cultural signposts" can be riddled with classist assumptions.

Dear Old-fashioned,

Everyone has bugbears. Some people might call it old-fashioned, while others refer to it as their gut. If your adviser says, "Hey," and reveals they don't know what AT&T stands for, that's a red line for you. The couple who wrote in were put off by their adviser addressing them as "you guyses." It was not only grammatically incorrect; for them, it was too casual.

For some, it's the difference between a percentage and a percentage point, or not being able to distinguish between a mutual fund and an exchange-traded fund, or being able to do more than push a company's products. Others have an array of questions they want an adviser to answer, some of which I touched on in my answer to the "you guyses" couple.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was the primary co-founder of the original Bell Telephone Company, which reorganized to become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, also known as "Ma Bell," before being broken up by antitrust laws in 1984. Will everyone know that? Nope. Does it matter? To you, yes. To others, maybe not so much.

Not knowing that AT&T $(T)$ originally stood for American Telephone and Telegraph doesn't tell me whether my adviser understands portfolio management, tax-loss harvesting or estate planning. It may signal that he was born in the 2000s rather than the 1900s. If they can't explain the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, I'd be a lot more concerned.

There was a time when a "fist bump" was seen as inappropriate. Post-COVID, it's a more acceptable greeting.

There was a time when a "fist bump" was seen as presumptuous and inappropriate in a professional context. Today, it's more acceptable in a post-COVID era where people are not only conscious about pandemics and food poisoning, the flu and RSV; they also don't want to get a cold. (RSV, for what it's worth, stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus and, yes, I had to look that up.)

You are charging your adviser with a lot of responsibility, your money and your time. You should be comfortable with them, so I won't judge anyone who feels that some detail puts them off. Maybe they're wearing a wrinkled shirt, or they have bad breath, or they have a mullet. We all make micro-judgments about people, whether we admit it or not.

Does a "wet lettuce" handshake give you the heebeegeebees? It might give you the impression that the person lacks conviction or confidence. Is that a fair assumption? Probably not. Maybe they don't want to squeeze too hard and come across as too aggressive. All the more reason to double down on questions about your actual financial plan. You might be happily surprised.

"Cultural signposts" can be riddled with classist assumptions. How someone dresses, how they speak, what accent they have, and even their body language can all be weaponized against them in job interviews and client/adviser relationships. It's a minefield out there. Remember this guy? He was a mover and shaker, culturally astute and a member of the best country club in town.

Related: I'm 67, own two mortgage-free homes worth $2.8 million, but I have $19,000 in credit-card debt. Should I get a HELOC?

Effects of bias

Here's the brutal truth: Dr. Nicholas Rule, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, speaking on this podcast for the American Psychological Association, says that people form first impressions within milliseconds, often before they are consciously aware of doing so. These snap judgments come before evaluating them on competence, leadership or personality.

Rule points to research showing that first impressions are surprisingly accurate in some cases, but only moderately so overall - around 60 to 65% accuracy. People are especially good at judging characteristics such as age and gender, while traits like trustworthiness are judged poorly despite people's confidence in their abilities, Rule says.

It's not always fair, of course. Rule says impressions are shaped by both genuine perceptions and social biases. Stereotypes and cultural narratives strongly influence perceptions, leading to systematic errors, particularly in race and ethnicity, which have serious consequences for policing and criminal justice. Hence, the push for unconscious-bias training in organizations.

Regarding artificial intelligence, Rule suggests that AI systems risk inheriting the same biases as humans because they are trained on human-generated data. However, he believes human bias remains the greater concern, particularly because people are often overconfident in the accuracy of their own judgments.

Let's not be surprised if someone dismisses us because we don't know everything about everything.

He is more worried about human bias than bias built into artificial intelligence. Still, "as long as AI aspires to be like a human, it's going to reflect all the good and bad of what it means to be a human," Rule says. "I think there's a particular risk in people perhaps having a sense of objectivity about AI because it seems as if it ought not have bias because it's a machine."

Rule doesn't say we should ignore first impressions, but we should treat them skeptically, as a hypothesis, rather than a verdict. A first impression is useful because it alerts us to something our brains have noticed. It's dangerous because we often stop collecting evidence once we've made up our minds. Would you buy a stock based on the first headline you read? Of course not.

The trick is distinguishing between signals of substance and style. A casual greeting, an unfamiliar acronym, or a limp handshake may tell you something about a person's communication style. But they tell you very little about whether they can build a retirement income strategy, minimize your taxes, or keep you from making big mistakes.

The hope is that we are better than the kind of biases we experience in other people and in AI. I chose a happy - some might say smug - photo for this article. No one is immune to cultural commentary. If we are going to dismiss someone over a "hey" or a "you guyses," don't be surprised if someone dismisses us because we don't know everything about everything.

I'd be more suspect of someone who claimed that.

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By emailing your questions to The Moneyist or posting your dilemmas on The Moneyist Facebook group, you agree to have them published anonymously on MarketWatch.

More columns from Quentin Fottrell:

'I don't want to sound callous': Why base your Social Security claim on life expectancy? We could die at any time.

'They cut off online access': My mother's bank balance plummeted after her death. What's going on?

'I was shoveling sidewalks at 8 years old': I'm a 73-year-old boomer dad with two kids. Here's what I teach them about finance

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-Quentin Fottrell

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July 16, 2026 08:03 ET (12:03 GMT)

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