In "Teachable Moment," FA-IQ asks an advisor to describe a challenging client interaction that taught him or her a lesson of lasting value. This week we interviewed Sunit Bhalla, principal of Oak Tree Financial Planning, a Fort Collins, Colo.-based firm that advises people in the tech industry. Bhalla recalls two clients who processed information in completely different ways — and happened to be married to each other.

My preference when working with couples is to meet with both spouses at the same time. But in one case, my approach posed a problem. The husband is very detail oriented, and he was the one who handled most of their financial decisions. The wife is very intelligent, but she generally takes a more hands-off approach. She wants to know what's going on in a big-picture sense, but she doesn't like to get bogged down in the details.

I had long struggled to find a way to communicate with both of them, and then one day I hit on a solution — without even meaning to.

The change came about as I was laying out plans for adjusting their bond portfolio. I was concerned with rising rates, and I wanted to make sure they were both on board with the new strategy. In our previous meeting, which took place over the phone because the clients don't live close to me, I tried to explain the situation. But it hadn't clicked, I could tell. They didn't seem particularly engaged and didn't ask any questions, which told me that they hadn't fully understood the complexity of the situation. I knew I needed to make it real for them.

For our next meeting, I developed a series of visuals — graphs and charts and things like that — to illustrate the steps I was planning to take with their portfolio. This time, we used video-chat software to run the meeting, which allowed me to show them images as we spoke.

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I had shown similar images to other clients before, but the effect on this particular couple was striking. For once, I got the sense that they were both engaged in the conversation. I felt that not only did they finally understand what I was trying to convey, but I had also accidentally found a way to communicate with both of them at the same time.

A well-developed graph allowed me to communicate on two different levels. The detail-oriented husband could look at the numbers and dig into the underlying data. Meanwhile, the wife, who preferred a big-picture approach, could look at the graph as a whole and get a sense of the overall message. Knowing that we were all on the same page helped me gain a lot of confidence in moving forward with the plan.

When you're explaining something using words, it can be hard to hit the right level of complexity without alienating someone who is bored by detail. But when you're using a well-designed visual, you can meet the needs of a broader audience. For instance, I think most of us aren't hardwired to pull trends out from a table of numbers, while we are typically much better at extracting relevant information from a picture. So I try not to include too much information that clutters up a slide, while making sure there is enough data to support the overall trends.

In my visuals, I try to present information in layers, introducing a simple slide first and then building the complexity gradually. While the last slide might be fairly complex, clients have been led through a progression of easy-to-understand steps. So they have a chance to take in the important things without being overpowered. They can pay attention to what they are naturally drawn to, either the data points or the big picture.