By Chuck Gallagher — Business Ethics Keynote Speaker and Trainer
TL;DR: Chuck Gallagher, AI ethics speaker and author, argues that the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics already holds planners accountable for AI, but the gaps around client disclosure, AI agents, supervision, conflicts, and competence are where the next ethics failures will begin.
Picture a financial planner on a Tuesday morning. A client meeting is set for ten. She opens an AI tool, pastes in the client’s account summary, and asks for a draft retirement-income recommendation. Twelve seconds later she has three clean paragraphs. She reads them. Adjusts a number. Prints the plan. At ten o’clock the client nods, signs, and leaves. Nobody in that room ever mentions that a machine wrote the first draft.
Was anything unethical about that morning? Under the current rules, probably not. Now, the way I see it, that is exactly the point.
Does the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics Cover Artificial Intelligence?
Yes, though not by name. The CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct took effect in 2019, three years before ChatGPT reached the public. It was written to be technology-neutral. Its Technology Standard, Standard A.14, requires a CFP professional to exercise reasonable care when selecting, using, or recommending any software or digital tool, and to have a reasonable basis for believing the technology produces reliable, objective, and appropriate outcomes. Add the fiduciary Duty of Care, the Duty of Loyalty, and Standard A.9 on confidentiality and privacy, and the accountability question is settled. If the AI gets it wrong, the planner owns it. Period.
As an AI ethics speaker and author, I spend a good part of my year working with professional organizations on exactly this kind of question. I don’t arrive with all the answers. Not even close. What I bring is a habit of asking where the written rule and the daily practice have drifted apart, because that space is where the risk lives. I learned that lesson the hard way. I was a young CPA who lost his license and went to federal prison over his own choices. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten it.
What Has the CFP Board Done About AI So Far?
More than most professional bodies. In February 2025 the Board published its Generative AI Ethics Guide, a checklist for protecting client confidentiality, verifying AI-generated material, and complying with privacy law. It convened an AI Working Group in June 2025, and that group’s November report named clearer guidance on ethical AI use as a priority. On August 14, 2026, the Board answered a request for information from House Financial Services Committee Democrats, recommending that firms using AI maintain appropriate human oversight and disclose AI’s role in advice delivery. The Board certifies more than 109,000 professionals. These steps carry real weight.
Where Are the Gaps in the CFP Code When It Comes to AI?
The first gap is disclosure. The Board has told Congress that firms should disclose AI’s role in advice. I could not find a corresponding requirement in the Code that a CFP professional tell the client. Think back to our planner on Tuesday morning. She met every written standard. Her client still didn’t know.
The second gap is scope. The Generative AI Ethics Guide expressly covers off-the-shelf generative AI platforms, not custom-built tools. Yet the AI now reaching planners is increasingly embedded inside planning software or built as agents that act on their own. FINRA’s 2026 Annual Regulatory Oversight Report addressed AI agents for the first time, warning that they can act without human approval and exceed the mandate a user intended.
The third gap is supervision. The Code’s supervision duty was written with human staff in mind. When an agent drafts client emails or proposes trades, nobody has yet said plainly who or what is being supervised. That’s a downright fuzzy line.
The fourth gap is conflicts. In 2025 the SEC withdrew a proposed rule that would have required advisers to eliminate or neutralize conflicts created by predictive data analytics, including AI. That leaves the general Duty of Loyalty as the main safeguard against a tool tuned, quietly, to favor a firm’s own products.
The fifth gap is competence. There is no AI-specific continuing education requirement yet, though the Board has pointed to enhanced continuing education as a commitment. The sixth gap is enforceability. Guides and checklists are useful, but they are not standards, and the reasonable-basis test in Standard A.14 has seen little testing in AI cases.
Why Do the Gaps Matter More Than the Rules?
People rarely fail where the rules are clear. They fail where the rules are quiet. A planner who would never lie to a client might never think to mention an AI tool, simply because nothing told her to. Don’t get me wrong. That’s not bad character. It’s human nature, filling an empty space with convenience.
The industry senses this. In the 2026 Investment Management Compliance Testing Survey from the Investment Adviser Association, ACA Group, and Yuter Compliance Consulting, 85 percent of 411 adviser firms named AI their hottest compliance topic, the most dominant single response in the survey’s 21-year history. Concern is high. Clarity hasn’t caught up. As we’d say in the South, there’s trouble afoot.
There is encouraging data, too. CFP Board’s consumer research found that when a financial planner verifies an AI-generated recommendation, the share of investors who describe themselves as very comfortable nearly doubles, from 12 percent to 21 percent. Clients are not asking planners to avoid AI. They’re asking planners to stand behind it.
What Should CFP Professionals Do While the Rules Catch Up?
My advice? Act as though the gaps were already closed. Tell clients when AI shaped their plan. Know whether a tool is a chatbot, an embedded feature, or an agent. Keep a record of what it did. Ask who benefits from its recommendations. Learn enough about it to question its output rather than simply accept it.
As an AI ethics speaker and author, I don’t believe the CFP Board has gotten this wrong. Let me be clear. The foundation is right. The edges are still being built. The professionals and organizations that find those edges first, and find them together, will be the ones who keep their clients’ trust. Every choice has a consequence. With AI, the most dangerous choices are the ones nobody realizes they’re making.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the CFP Code of Ethics allow financial planners to use AI?
Yes. The CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct is technology-neutral, so AI is permitted as long as the CFP professional meets existing duties. Standard A.14 requires reasonable care in selecting and using technology and a reasonable basis for believing it produces reliable, objective, and appropriate outcomes. The planner, not the tool, remains responsible for the advice.
Do CFP professionals have to tell clients when they use AI?
Based on the CFP Board’s published materials as of October 2026, the Code of Ethics does not contain an explicit requirement to disclose AI use to clients. In August 2026, however, CFP Board told House Financial Services Committee Democrats that firms using AI should disclose AI’s role in advice delivery. Chuck Gallagher, an AI ethics speaker and author, identifies this difference between recommendation and requirement as the most significant gap in the current framework.
What is the CFP Board’s Generative AI Ethics Guide?
Published in February 2025, the Generative AI Ethics Guide is a checklist that helps CFP professionals use generative AI consistent with the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct. It addresses client confidentiality, verifying the accuracy of AI-generated material, and compliance with privacy laws. Its recommendations apply to off-the-shelf generative AI platforms, both free and paid, rather than custom-built tools.
What does FINRA say about AI agents in financial services?
FINRA’s 2026 Annual Regulatory Oversight Report addressed AI agents for the first time, describing them as systems that can perform tasks autonomously on a user’s behalf. FINRA warned that agents may act without human validation and may exceed the authority a user intended. The report states that FINRA’s rules are technology-neutral and that firms remain responsible for compliance when they use generative AI.
Did the SEC adopt a rule on AI conflicts of interest for investment advisers?
No. The SEC proposed a predictive data analytics rule in 2023 that would have required advisers and broker-dealers to eliminate or neutralize certain technology-driven conflicts of interest, and it withdrew that proposal in 2025. AI-related conflicts are now governed by existing fiduciary duties and disclosure obligations. The SEC has also brought enforcement actions for misleading AI claims, including March 2024 settlements with Delphia and Global Predictions.
Finding the Gaps Together
Every profession adopting AI has gaps like these, and they will keep shifting as the technology changes. My work with professional associations, firms, and leadership teams is about finding those quiet places in the rules before a client or a regulator finds them first. I don’t come with a finished map. I come with the right questions and a lot of hard-earned experience about what happens in the spaces between policy and practice. If your organization is ready to look for its own gaps, bring Chuck Gallagher to your next conference, board retreat, or leadership session through ChuckGallagher.com.
Five Questions for Reflection
1. Where in your own practice or organization has a rule gone quiet on AI, and what has been happening in that silence?
2. Would your clients be surprised to learn how much AI shaped their most recent plan or recommendation? Why or why not?
3. Can you say with confidence whether each AI tool you use is a chatbot, an embedded feature, or an agent acting on its own?
4. If an AI tool were quietly favoring your firm’s products over your client’s interests, how would you find out?
5. What would it take for your team to identify its AI gaps before a client, a regulator, or a headline does?
