How can retirement plan sponsors and participants knowthe right answers if they don’t ask the right questions? Allow meto start my answer by telling you a story.

A man by the name of Chaerephon (can’t pronounce it? it doesn’tmatter because you’ll never see it again) asked the Oracle ofDelphi if there was no man wiser than his friend Socrates. Thepriestess pondered then answered, “There is no man wiser.” Whentold this, Socrates didn’t believe it, “I know that I have nowisdom, small or great.”

So he travelled the land searching all those he thought wiser.One by one he met them and, with each disappointment, Socratesbegan to see the wisdom of the Oracle’s remark. Unlike Socrates,all these other men thought they knew everything. Socrates aloneknew he didn’t know what he didn’t know. In other words, knowing hewasn’t wise made him the wisest of all men.

You don’t have to be a philosophy major to appreciate themeaning behind this story. In fact, it applies to all fields,including retirement planning.

Related: The most amazing 401(k) participantconversation

It turns out we find the same sort of “wise” folks in theretirement arena that Socrates found in ancient Athens. In the rushtowards financial literacy and employee education, it’s notsurprising to see plan sponsors and plan participants askingquestions. The issue is: are they asking the right questions (see“Why aren’t 401k Plan Sponsors and ParticipantsAsking These Questions?” FiduciaryNews.com, January10, 2017).

When plan sponsors think they know all the right questions toask, they may be inadvertently exposing themselves to increasedliability. This is the problem with all the attention being paid tofees (and, before that, all the attention that was being paid tothe investment menu).

No, being a plan sponsor doesn’t give you permission to focus ononly one thing. Plan sponsors need to ask a wide breadth ofquestions, including asking which questions they should be askingbut aren’t.

And it all starts with this pre-eminent question: “How can Ibest promote the best interests of the beneficiaries of theplan?”

The same can be said of plan participants, although I must admitthe industry has done a pretty good job at redirecting them overthe past few years.

In the old days, employees placed too much emphasis oninvestments. Some of them still do ask questions on this topic.

While more are getting closer to ask the right question, they’restill beating around the bush. They’re asking questions like “Howmuch will I need?” (thinking in terms of a dollar objective) whenthey should be asking “What return do I need to meet my retirementgoal?” (thinking in terms of a Goal-Oriented Target [GOT]objective).

Once employees get their arms around and understand the truenature of their GOT, then they can start playing with differentscenarios involving savings deferral rates and retirement date. Theretirement calculator they should use isn’t the typical “assetallocation” calculator. Using these popular calculators leads totypical irrelevant questions like, “How much should I investing ineach asset category?” “What return rate assumptions should I usefor each asset category?” and “How much should I assume inflationshould be?”

The more important questions are “How much can I contribute eachyear?” and “At what age can I retire?”

The challenge with the “Socratic” definition is identifying whoknows all the right questions. It’s clear there are questions thatare farther from the mark and questions that are closer to themark.

Probably the best approach would be to continue asking andsurveying the wisdom of the “crowd.” No man might be wiser thanSocrates, but dollars to donuts the entire city of Athens tops himin wisdom.