It is increasingly common for executives in transition to hire an adviser to help them through the process. This greater reliance on external advice is not surprising. There is so much pressure to keep focused on a current role that it is often easy to get diverted from the wider objective of a career transition. As a result, people lose control of their own transition; they are forced to react to decisions made by others about their own career; or they simply drift into the next role without sufficient preparation or reflection. So having made the decision to seek external advice on a career transition, what questions should you ask an external adviser? The first and most important one is: