Advisory Services vs. Advisory Mindset: The Real Path to Becoming a Trusted Advisor

In an era where CPA firms are battling commoditization, talent shortages, and rising client expectations, one truth has become clear: it’s not enough to offer advisory services — you must think like an advisor.

Many firms tout advisory capabilities. They’ve added fractional CFO work, built service lines around M&A consulting or outsourced accounting, and even branded “Client Advisory Services” teams. But something’s missing. Despite the new logos and the fresh fees, the client experience often remains transactional.

So, what’s the real difference between offering advisory services and embodying an advisory mindset?

Let’s break it down.

Advisory Services: A Structured Offering

Advisory services are a defined set of offerings a firm markets and delivers to solve specific client problems. These services are:

• Scoped and often fixed-fee
• Built around repeatable deliverables
• Managed like mini-consulting engagements
• Often tied to departments or verticals within the firm

Think of things like:

• Strategic planning or budgeting
• Exit or succession planning
• HR consulting
• Technology or cybersecurity assessments

These services can be high margin and high impact — but only if clients know about them and trust you enough to bring you in upstream.

Too often, these offerings sit in silos — underutilized and poorly cross-sold — because the partners and managers on the front lines are stuck in compliance mode. That’s where mindset comes in.

Advisory Mindset: A Behavioral Shift

The advisory mindset isn’t a service. It’s not a line on your website. It’s a way of being.

It means approaching every client interaction — tax prep, audit kickoff, payroll check-in — with curiosity, strategic thinking, and empathy. It means listening for what’s not being said. It means having the courage to ask tough questions and make bold suggestions.

What does it look like in practice?

• A staff accountant notices margin compression in a client’s P&L and flags it, unprompted.
• A tax partner opens planning season by asking about the client’s five-year goals, not deductions.
• A senior manager brings a new tech tool to a client discussion, not because they were asked, but because they saw an opportunity.

These aren’t official services. They’re behaviors.

Firms that cultivate the advisory mindset build trust — not because of what they sell, but because of how they think.

The Drift Toward Transactionalism

Here’s the hard truth: the accounting profession is drifting away from relationships and toward transactions.

Why?

• The volume of compliance work keeps growing.
• Talent is thin, and the bench is stretched.
• Private equity is consolidating the profession, scaling with tech and cost-cutting models.
• And firms — even well-meaning ones — are increasingly focused on efficiency over connection.

In that environment, the easiest thing to do is do the work, send the invoice, move on.

The problem? That’s a recipe for client turnover and partner burnout.

Clients want more. Not more services — more thinking. More strategic input. More proactive support. They want a firm that understands their business and isn't afraid to challenge them.

That’s the job of a trusted advisor. And you don’t get there with a menu of offerings. You get there with mindset, behavior, and courage.

How to Embrace the Trusted Advisor Model

Here’s where you start.

1. Reframe the Role of Everyone in the Firm

Everyone — from interns to partners — can think like an advisor. Teach your people to ask:

“What’s really going on in this business?”
“How can I add value beyond the task in front of me?”

Make that thinking visible, encouraged, and celebrated.

2. Normalize Vulnerability

Most professionals don’t behave like advisors because they’re afraid.

• Afraid of looking stupid
• Afraid of suggesting something outside their lane
• Afraid of losing the business

Pat Lencioni, in Getting Naked, calls out these exact fears. Firms must train and model how to shed those fears — how to speak with honesty, admit what they don’t know, and challenge clients anyway. That’s how you build real trust.

3. Embed Strategic Conversations in Routine Work

Don’t wait for a formal “advisory engagement” to start thinking strategically.

• Add one strategic question to every recurring client meeting.
• Use quarterly check-ins as a platform for deeper conversations.
• Coach managers to notice and elevate issues, not just complete deliverables.

4. Break Down Silos

Most firms already have advisory services. But if the audit team doesn’t know what the tech consulting team does — and doesn’t feel equipped to bring it up — it dies on the vine. Create internal training, cheat sheets, and advisory playbooks by industry.

Start with one goal: help your people ask better questions.

The Bottom Line

You can’t “sell” your way to trusted advisor status. You have to think your way there.

Advisory services are valuable. But the firms that will thrive in the next 10 years are the ones where everyone shows up with an advisory mindset — curious, proactive, strategic, and human.

Because in the end, clients won’t remember the template you used or the spreadsheet you sent.

They’ll remember how you made them think differently.

They’ll remember who got in the room with them — and got real.

They’ll remember who helped them solve problems they didn’t even know they had.

That’s the difference. And that’s your opportunity.