Oh,
what a melancholy choice
this is.
Wanting home,
wanting him
-Fiddler on the Roof,
Hodel sings
“Far From the Home I Love”

Decisions should not be based solely on the basis of friends' recommendations. That would be a lazy and ineffective way to avoid the need for serious research.

People who have to make decisions often move in the wrong direction.

Young adults who are looking for their future direction in life, or adults who are trying to resolve a problem at home, at work, or within themselves, may ask their friends for suggestions. Their friends give them answers that are not likely to be based upon intensive consideration, research, or a knowledge of the big picture. These people should turn to a qualified consultant in the area in which they need help.

This is seen very clearly in the case of the computer software specialists.

Computer consultants are faced with clients who need to learn how to use a particular software package. When queried, the clients explain that they want to go into a particular field of endeavor.

For example, a photographer may want to study PhotoShop(TM) in order to modify pictures. However, a good consultant would ask what the client wants to accomplish by modifying the pictures. It is possible that the client spoke to some photographer friends who use PhotoShop, and the client feels that he wants to accomplish the same thing.

Thus, the friends who happened to use a particular software package will determine whether this person will spend a great deal of time, training, and money in order to learn the same package. However, her region may not need yet another person who is learning how to use yet another copy of the same package.

Counselors should discuss what the potential student wants to accomplish. They should not ask which software package the client wants to study. The counselor should help the client set their short- and long-range goals, and then help them achieve these goals. At that stage, they should acquire the best tools to achieve their goals.

These discussions may also involve questions about the possibility for current and future employment in that region with those skills. Is there already a great deal of competition in the region? Does their physical and mental makeup and capacity tend to make it easier or harder to work with these products? It may also be necessary to evaluate the forecast for such work in the future.

After a full understanding of the best alternatives, the original desire is almost inevitably changed and is no longer relevant to the situation. The client can then opt to study something that is more appropriate to their needs, and which they are more likely to be capable of handling.

There are other options as well. Some people may want to study an advanced topic in computers. Again, these people may claim to have received advice from others that computers are supposedly the right thing to study.

In all too many cases, the consultant will conclude that the clients' background and knowledge are far from the direction or requirements that are needed in order to be able to succeed in the field. The large amount of prerequisite study would take a great deal of time - after which there would be no guarantee that the client would still be interested in taking the advanced course based on somebody else's recommendation.

Counselors and psychologists deal with this problem frequently. People ask unqualified friends or acquaintances about their proper direction. They are given ineffectual or irrelevant responses that do not reflect sufficient thought. Sometimes these answers reflect the friends' his own desire to know a certain field. Sometimes the opposite issue is at play - the friend wants to limit his competition, so he directs the friend into an area that will not interfere with his target audience.

Thus, it is important to look for the friend's private agenda when giving advice.