Today’s guest commentator is Steven Sands, Head of Platform Sales at Standard Life. The following views are his personal views and not necessarily those of The Platforum. Thanks to Steve for his contribution.

Before we turn to more mundane matters, many congratulations to Holly on the birth of her baby girl. All your friends at Standard Life wish you well and we hope you get at least a little sleep.

As the FSA publish their latest discussion paper, our industry's thoughts will turn to rebates, fees, charges and client outcomes. Whatever the detail, I have no doubt this will trigger acres of commentary and complex arguments from the usual suspects. I can hardly wait.

But behind all the playground point scoring, there is a fundamental issue. As an industry, we confuse transparency with clarity. Our customers ask for clarity and the industry strives to give them transparency. Look at what we all write at the end of our customer documents - Z clauses that say everything and inform nothing. The tobacco industry uses a Z clause of three syllables, "Smoking Kills".

In my younger days, I fancied myself as a bit of a petrolhead. When I got my first car I was itching to get under the bonnet and make all sorts of improvements. Unfortunately, my aspirations soon fizzled out when I got the relevant bit of the engine out and realised I just didn't have the skill to strip and rebuild it. I could see all the parts but it was just too much. In our language now, I had transparency but no clarity. When my dad - a more able mechanic - got home, you could say I was given both clarity and understanding. The difference between the two - clarity and transparency - is in danger of being lost in the coming weeks and with it the opportunity for all of us to improve our customer relationships and our businesses.

One of the key drivers of the RDR should be better customer outcomes. This comes best from our customers understanding what we each do for them. The industry has an opportunity to come up with simple clear models for charges.

And we could avoid the pitfall of creating yet more fund share classes that some want to provide charging transparency. We might even come up with Z clauses that are in plain English. Or we could carry on dreaming up complex solutions to arcane issues that our customers neither know nor care about.

None of us - providers or advisers - get it right all the time but customers will notice those of us who try to give them clarity about what we do and what we stand for. They'll reward us with long term, new model and RDR friendly, profitable relationships. Maybe in the coming weeks and all its acres of comment, we should look behind the bickering and look for those who believe in clarity above all, whatever guise it comes in.

For our part, we will look for ways we can support advisers in best serving the needs of their clients. Simple as that.

Steve Sands