Skills
Telling a client they are wrong
Disagreeing with someone who is paying is a different problem from disagreeing internally, because the person you are contradicting cannot be overruled by anyone in your organisation.
By Julien Perrot3 min read
The external version has no appeal route
Internal disagreement has a structure behind it. If you and a colleague cannot agree, somebody above both of you eventually decides, and that possibility shapes the whole conversation. With a client or a customer there is no such mechanism. They can simply insist, and the only escalation available is the commercial one, which nobody wants to reach for over a technical point.
That changes what you are actually doing when you disagree. You are not trying to win an argument, because winning is not on the menu and pushing for it is how relationships end. You are trying to make sure the decision is made with the information you have, which is a narrower and much more achievable goal.
Separate the request from the reasoning behind it
Most client instructions arrive as solutions rather than as problems. They ask for a specific thing, and the specific thing may be wrong while the underlying need is entirely legitimate. Arguing with the instruction leads nowhere useful; asking what it is meant to achieve almost always does.
That question also has to be asked carefully, because a badly framed version implies they have not thought about it. Something closer to checking your own understanding — so that this works for the situation you described, do I have that right — invites them to explain rather than defend. A surprising proportion of disagreements dissolve at that point, because it turns out you were solving different problems.
State the consequence, not the verdict
When the disagreement survives that, the useful move is to describe what will happen rather than to characterise the decision. Saying that an approach is wrong invites a contest of judgement. Saying that this route means a particular outcome, on a particular timescale, at a particular cost, gives them something to weigh.
Then let them decide, and be visibly willing to proceed either way. Clients are unusually alert to being managed, and the impression that you will only cooperate if you get your way is expensive. Someone who lays out the trade clearly and then implements the choice they did not recommend is trusted a great deal more the second time, which is when it matters.
Write it down, once, without theatre
Where you have advised against something and been overruled on a matter that could cost real money, a short written record of what was advised and what was decided is ordinary professional practice. It protects both sides, because it also documents that the client made an informed choice rather than being led into it.
The tone determines how it lands. A brief note confirming the decision and the expected consequences reads as diligence. The same content written defensively reads as building a case, and a client who feels a file is being assembled against them behaves differently afterwards. Send it as a summary of an agreement, not as a warning.
Your own organisation is part of this
Do not disagree with a client in isolation, particularly early in a career. Whoever owns the relationship needs to know before the client does, both because they may have context you lack and because being surprised by a client’s complaint is the fastest way to lose their support.
It is also worth being honest that commercial pressure sometimes wins internally. You may be told to proceed with something you consider poor, and where that happens the reasonable position is to make sure the decision and its basis are recorded and then to do the work. Where it involves safety, legality or professional obligations, that calculus changes entirely, and the right route is your organisation’s formal channel or the relevant professional body rather than a private accommodation.
Not every disagreement is worth having
A judgement call worth making early is whether the thing you disagree about actually matters. Junior people often expend their limited credit on preferences — a better approach, a tidier method — and then have nothing left when something genuinely consequential arrives. Clients remember how often you push back rather than what about.
The rough filter is whether the outcome would be materially worse, whether it can be reversed later, and whether anyone will be able to tell. If a decision is easily undone and only mildly suboptimal, letting it go is not weakness. It is the reason your objection carries weight on the day something is neither easily undone nor mild.
Common questions
What if the client insists on something I know will not work?
Set out the likely consequence in writing, briefly and neutrally, then proceed with their decision unless it raises a safety, legal or professional issue. Where it does raise one, that is a matter for your organisation’s formal channels or the relevant professional body rather than something to resolve privately with the client.
Should I raise it in a meeting or afterwards?
It depends on the audience. Where the client has colleagues present, a public contradiction can force them into defending a position they might otherwise have dropped, so a short private follow-up frequently achieves what a room full of people will not.
How do I tell whether something is worth pushing back on?
Ask whether the outcome would be materially worse and whether the decision can be reversed later. Reserving your objections for things that fail both tests keeps your pushback meaningful, whereas contesting every preference spends credit you will want when something consequential appears.
Deputy editor, After the First Job
Julien covers first months, managing up, money at work and the questions readers actually send in and would rather show the working than assert the conclusion.
