When someone tells you what to do, they are also telling you what they would do — with their appetite for risk, their reputation, their portfolio. That doesn’t make advice worthless; it makes it a starting position in a negotiation you are running. Your job is to find what’s true for your situation underneath what’s true for theirs.

This piece will cover:

• Why “neutral” advice doesn’t exist
• Reading the incentive behind the recommendation
• How to extract the reasoning instead of the conclusion
• Saying no to good advice that isn’t yours

Working draft — an outline for now; the full version is coming.