It was every journalist’s nightmare. I had travelled two hours by train to attend a conference at which I was to interview two financial advisors. Having just arrived in my hotel room, I decided to make sure my old, reliable tape recorder was in working order. It wasn’t.

I went through the troubleshooting routine: new batteries, a different cassette, the pause button — nothing. Fortunately, the first interview was not for another hour. I had to buy a new recorder, and fast.

In a matter of minutes, I was standing before a display case of recording devices in the store. I even found one similar to the unit that had just died on me. And it was cheap. Problem solved, right?

Think again. I’m a guy. I was mesmerized by the latest crop of gleaming digital recorders that — in their James Bond-like elegance — made my cassette recorder look like the audio equivalent of a Kodak Brownie. Perhaps it was time for me to make the move to the cool world of digital recorders. I imagined finishing the interview on my nifty new digital job, popping it into my tuxedo pocket and nipping into the hotel casino for a vodka martini and a game of baccarat.

“Need any help?” asked the sales clerk, a young woman barely out of high school.

I explained that I needed to replace a broken tape recorder in time for an interview in less than an hour. I pointed out the model that looked just like my old one.

As the saleswoman unlocked the case, I added: “But I’m thinking maybe I should move up to one of these digital recorders.”

Seeming to ignore me, she pulled out the tape machine and locked the display case: “Have you used a digital recorder before?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then I’d recommend you take the one you’re familiar with if you have to use it today,” she said. “It may take you a while to learn how to use the digital.”

I bought the old-fashioned magnetic-tape contraption, and it worked like a charm. No learning curve. I was grateful that she had steered me away from the more expensive purchase (and my James Bond fantasy) in the interest of solving my problem.

That evening, at the conference cocktail reception, I found myself in a conversation with a couple of financial advisors about fees. One was making an argument in favour of the fee-only model: “If you’re making commissions from the sale of products, you’re not offering unbiased advice. Your decision on which products to recommend could be influenced by the commissions or fees those products pay you.”

That debate — between advocates of fee-only advice and the commission-based sales of financial products — has been raging for years. While the fee-only position usually wins the argument from a philosophical standpoint, commission-based advisors still outnumber fee-only planners by a significant margin.

That disproportion could be for any number of reasons. Perhaps fee-only planners haven’t done a good enough job telling their story to the public. Perhaps they are unable to compete with the consumer advertising put out by the fund companies and insurance companies, which steers more members of the public to the commission-based advisors who sell their products.

Regardless of fee models, the advisors who succeed will be those who find out what their clients’ needs are and solve their problems — as surely as my new friend at the electronics store did.

A couple of months later, I decided to make the move to digital audio recording. I took my business to my local outlet of that same electronics-store chain. And I love my new high-tech, digital recorder. It does everything — except mix a martini.

Grant McIntyre, Senior Editor