Prospective clients want to know whether you work with people like them, how you are paid, what registration or credentials you hold, what the work includes, and what happens after they say yes. Regulators already publish lists of questions consumers should ask, so many prospects arrive with some version of them. Your website should answer each one in the firm's own approved words and point to where a reader can check the answer.
Most financial firm sites answer a different question: what services do you offer? That list matters, but a prospect comparing two financial, accounting and tax firms is usually trying to decide something narrower, such as whether an advisor's pay creates a conflict or whether a preparer can stand beside them in an audit.
This is a content-planning question for owners and marketing leads at advisory, CPA, tax, and bookkeeping firms. It is not investment, tax, or accounting advice, and the rules that apply to your pages depend on how your firm is registered or licensed.
Regulators have already published the question list
The SEC's Investor.gov page on working with an investment adviser gives investors a set of questions to ask. They include "Are you registered with the SEC, a state, or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)?", "How are you paid for your services? What is your usual hourly rate, flat fee, or commission?", and "What experience do you have, especially with people in my circumstances?" The same page suggests asking for the firm's latest Form ADV, "including the brochure and the brochure supplement," and advises: "Always check out both the person as well as the firm."
The IRS does the same for tax help. Its Tax Topic 254 on choosing a preparer tells taxpayers to "Check the person's credentials" and notes that "Only attorneys, CPAs, and enrolled agents can represent taxpayers before the IRS in all matters, including audits, collections, and appeals." It also asks them to consider "whether the individual or firm will be around for months or years after filing the return."
These lists are written for consumers, and nobody can say how many of your prospects have read them. They are still a useful outline, because they show which questions a regulator thinks a careful person should raise before hiring. If your website is silent on them, the first call has to cover them instead.
Group the questions by the decision behind them
Each question stands in for a decision the prospect is trying to make. Sorting them that way tells you which page should carry the answer and who at the firm has to supply it.
| Question family | What the prospect is deciding | Where the answer usually lives | Who supplies the facts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do you work with people like me? | Whether to keep reading or move on | Service and niche pages, advisor bios | Partners or lead advisors |
| How are you paid? | Whether the cost and any conflicts are acceptable | Fee page | Owner, plus compliance for advisers |
| What are you registered or licensed as? | Whether the firm can do the work they need | Bios, credentials section, footer | Compliance or the firm administrator |
| What is included, and what is not? | Whether this engagement solves their problem | Service pages | The people who deliver the work |
| What happens after the first call? | Whether the process feels manageable | Engagement or onboarding page | Operations lead |
| Will you be there later in the year? | Whether help continues past the deliverable | Service pages, FAQ | Owner |
Two of these families have their own pages in this series. For pay, see how a financial firm should explain what it charges. For the steps after the first conversation, see explaining what happens after the first call.
Answer in the firm's words, not a consumer guide's
It is tempting to copy a regulator's checklist onto an FAQ page and call the job done. That tells the reader what to ask without telling them anything about you. A question list is not an answer. The real answer to "What experience do you have with people in my circumstances?" is a description of the client situations your firm actually handles, the work it does in them, and the ones it sends elsewhere.
Specific answers are also easier for a reviewer to approve, because each sentence can be traced to something the firm knows. "We help families with all their financial needs" is hard to support. "We prepare individual and small business returns, and our enrolled agents represent clients in IRS examinations" is a statement compliance can check against the firm's records.
The review itself depends on the firm. For an SEC-registered adviser, the SEC's marketing rule guide describes the first part of the advertisement definition as any "direct or indirect communication an investment adviser makes that" offers the adviser's "investment advisory services with regard to securities to prospective clients or private fund investors," so a page answering prospect questions may fall inside it. State-registered advisers should check their state's rules. CPA firms answer to their state boards (the AICPA's licensure guide notes that "Each U.S. state and territory has its own board of accountancy") and, for members, to the AICPA Code, which "applies to all members." Attorneys, CPAs, enrolled agents, and others who practice before the IRS are subject to Circular 230 (31 CFR Part 10), whose solicitation section bars, in any IRS matter, "a misleading or deceptive statement or claim." Bring each draft to whoever handles that review before it goes live.
Collect the real questions from the people who take the calls
The regulator lists give you a floor. Your own prospects will add questions those lists never mention: whether you work with clients in other states, whether you handle a particular kind of business, whether a spouse needs to attend. Those questions live in intake notes, discovery call summaries, emails, and the memory of whoever answers the phone.
Spend a week collecting them. A useful prompt is to ask the team, "Which question did a prospect ask this month that our website could have answered before the call?" Write each one down in the prospect's own wording, and note which service it came up for. Keep questions people actually asked separate from questions you brainstormed, since the first group deserves attention first. The method in finding the buyer questions missing from your website shows how to sort what you collect.
Then compare the list with your pages. Some questions will already be answered but buried. Others will have no answer anywhere, and a few will need a decision from the partners before anyone can write a word.
Fictional example: a tax and planning firm in Ohio
Here is a hypothetical case. A fictional Ohio firm offers tax preparation through two enrolled agents and financial planning through a separate state-registered advisory arm. Its homepage promises "personalized financial guidance for every stage of life." Intake notes show prospects keep asking three things: whether the same people handle taxes and planning, whether the firm can help with an IRS letter, and how planning is billed.
None of those answers can be drafted from a guess. The writer should not have to invent which matters the firm takes on or how the advisory arm charges, because the partners already know and have it written down in engagement letters and the advisory brochure. The revision pulls from those documents:
- A short section explaining that tax work and planning are separate engagements, with different people and different agreements.
- A sentence naming which staff are enrolled agents, linked to the firm's own page on IRS representation.
- A pointer from the planning page to the fee explanation, kept consistent with the advisory arm's disclosures and reviewed by its compliance contact.
Each change answers a question someone actually asked. None of it required a new claim about results.
Keep the answers checkable and current
Where a fact can be confirmed in a public record, say where. Investor.gov describes the IAPD database as containing "registration documents filed by investment adviser firms," so an adviser can point readers there. Enrolled agents and CPAs can point to the IRS's directory, which the IRS says lists "preparers in your area who currently hold professional credentials recognized by the IRS," and CPAs can also point to their state board's license records. A reader who can check a claim has less reason to doubt it.
Answers also go stale. Fees change, staff leave, a service gets dropped. Give each answer an owner and a review date, and recheck the pages whenever the firm updates its disclosures or engagement letters.
In Hudson South's process, the Authority Asset gathers the firm's approved knowledge and evidence, such as engagement letters, fee schedules, and disclosure documents. Hudson Twenty-One records how the firm communicates across 21 dimensions so the answers sound like its people. Market Intelligence researches the questions prospective clients ask and the market around them. AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first content.
See which client questions your site leaves open
On a free 30-minute call, Hudson South walks through where your site and your competitors' sites differ in answering the questions prospective clients ask before they hire.
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- Investment Advisers. Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Read 2026-10-15.
- Topic no. 254, How to choose a tax return preparer. Internal Revenue Service. Read 2026-10-15.
- Investment Adviser Marketing. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Read 2026-10-15.
- AICPA Code of Professional Conduct. AICPA. Read 2026-10-15.
- CPA licensure requirements by state. This Way to CPA, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. Read 2026-10-15.
- 31 CFR 10.30, Solicitation. eCFR, National Archives. Read 2026-10-15.
- 31 CFR Part 10, Practice Before the Internal Revenue Service. eCFR, National Archives. Read 2026-10-15.
- Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD). Investor.gov, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Read 2026-10-15.
- Choosing a tax professional. Internal Revenue Service. Read 2026-10-15.