There are moments in life when one realizes one has accidentally become an unpaid educational resource for highly remunerated people.
This is always an awkward discovery.
It happened to me recently. I had been invited to speak to a gathering of around 30 senior professionals working in the financial sector who wanted to understand how artificial intelligence might affect the future of their industry and whether lateral thinking, Edward de Bono’s method of deliberately changing perception to find possibilities conventional logic may miss, could help them navigate whatever was coming next. I was de Bono’s biographer. My book “Love Laterally” had recently been released, and so I was doing what authors of a new book typically do: offering my expertise.
The attendees were engaged. Extremely engaged. Questions poured forth afterward about leadership, difficult personalities, education, institutional blindness, younger generations and whether children would still be able to distinguish between what is real and what is synthetic.
I spoke about de Bono, movement of perception, the dangers of certainty and why intelligence alone doesn’t protect organizations from poor judgment. I explained why younger people may actually adapt to AI more effectively than adults because they already inhabit worlds saturated with information, filtering and digital manipulation. They nodded seriously. Some took notes. One or two looked visibly relieved when I suggested that the future might still require human beings.
I had expected to offer a short presentation, but the session evolved into an hour and a half exploration of how lateral thinking could help banks and brokerage firms identify opportunities within technological disruption and avoid viewing AI solely as a highly efficient mechanism for making themselves redundant.
Then, several days later, I tried to send my invoice for 1,000 pounds, roughly $1,340.
This proved unexpectedly educational.
Apparently there had been “a misunderstanding.” The event, it transpired, had not been viewed as paid professional work. It had been considered more in the spirit of visibility, introductions and future opportunities.
Ah, yes. Exposure.
The last refuge of people who definitely have a budget but suddenly develop philosophical objections to using it.
Now, before everyone rushes to outrage, let me say this: I do not think anybody involved was malicious. I suspect this is one of those peculiarly British collisions of ambiguity, assumption and social discomfort.
I also believe creative people often avoid money conversations because they feel awkward, transactional or faintly vulgar. We prefer ideas. Possibilities. Intellectual excitement. Meaningful discussion.
No one discussed money beforehand.
I assumed that a substantial speaking engagement involving preparation, travel, presentation and follow up materials was understood to be professional work. They assumed I was there primarily for networking opportunities and intellectual exchange. This is, in many ways, a perfect example of lateral thinking in action: Two intelligent groups looking at exactly the same situation and perceiving entirely different realities.
Lateral thinking treats perception as something we can deliberately move rather than simply trust. I used three of de Bono’s tools: “reversal,” “extreme” and “po.” “Reversal” asks what the situation looks like from the other side. “Extreme” pushes an assumption until its weakness becomes visible. “Po” allows a deliberately provocative idea without requiring us to defend it as true. Ironically, applying them to my dilemma made it easier to understand how two sides could leave the same room with entirely different perceptions of what had occurred.
And here lies the uncomfortable truth: Value unspoken is value undefined.
One of the most important lessons in professional life is that if you do not define the value of your work clearly, someone else will define it for you. Often downward. Particularly if you work across creative, intellectual or interdisciplinary worlds where people struggle to categorize what you actually “do.”
What fascinated me most, however, was that the entire experience inadvertently proved the very point of my talk. The session itself had centered on how institutions become trapped by assumptions they no longer even recognize as assumptions.
Highly intelligent people often become extremely efficient at operating within established systems while remaining surprisingly blind to alternative framings. For example: “This is excellent work and we should absolutely have it” and “We should therefore pay for it” ought logically to belong together. Yet frequently they do not. Somewhere between admiration and accounts payable, civilization falters.
There is also another lesson here, one more practical than philosophical: Never ever do substantial professional work without clarifying terms first. Not because people are wicked. Because ambiguity is expensive.
As AI expands and traditional career structures fragment, more people will increasingly operate across multiple disciplines: writing, consulting, speaking, teaching, advising, creating and synthesizing knowledge in ways that do not fit neatly into conventional professional categories.
This means understanding one’s own value becomes one of the most important future skills of all.
Without embarrassment.
Without apology.
Without emotional collapse.
And to invoice accordingly.
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Appeared in the September 12, 2026, print edition as 'The Cost of Thinking for Free'.
Sarah Tucker is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of "Edward de Bono: Love Laterally."