The issue was raised yesterday at the institute's professional development day in Auckland, where president Nigel Tate outlined the IFA's latest guidance.

It was prepared in light of recent court judgments that caused uncertainty among advisers, particularly the Armitage v Church case, which the IFA's lawyers reviewed extensively.

Tate joked that the lawyers' response to the judgment had been "thou shalt not give any advice as there is too much risk."

Instead of heeding this advice and packing it in altogether, the IFA put together new recommendations on how to deal with a range of potentially hazardous issues such as risk profiling, scope of advice and diversification.

Tate emphasised that the guidelines are voluntary and advisers aren't bound by them, unlike the code of conduct.

One attendee asked if "members are free to ignore the guidelines if they wish", to which he replied, "absolutely," and later added, "they are guidance not rules."

He said, however, that it could be useful if advisers ended up in court to be able to say they had followed the IFA's practice guidelines.

But advisers are worried the guidelines themselves could put them in the firing line, if they choose not to follow them and later get sued or prosecuted and the court wrongly regards them as rules.

When questioned about the issue yesterday Tate said the institute would be working hard to make sure the FMA understood the voluntary nature of the guidance.

Another concern among advisers at yesterday's conference was how much research they needed to do and how many investment products they needed to look at before making recommendations to clients.

"I don't think there is a requirement for us to assess every single option," Tate said.

"We are not investment analysts, we are financial advisers and it's more about building relationships and filtering out the techno speak and translating it into English or Mandarin or whatever.

 "We all have our favourites but it's not because we get 5% rather than 2% but because we have experience with it [the product] and our experience has been positive."