At a charity auction, I was the winning bid for a consultation with a sports nutritionist. My first assignment was to write down everything I ate for several days.

Here was one lunch’s description: “Oh gosh. Horrible lunch. Ate a pork chop about the size of a liver. :( Plus lots of spinach. I was so hungry!” One afternoon I wrote: “I give up! Been craving good sweets all week. Broke down and ate Now & Laters — 240 calories.”

I sent her the diary with a note. “Please don’t judge me.” I KNEW she’d come back and say, “Woman, you suck. You eat all day every day. Your problem is that you need to stop eating. Duh.”

But her actual response blew me away. “You are definitely not eating enough,” she wrote. “I need to explain the function of eating at the right time so that your body does not slow your metabolism down thinking it won’t get any food.”

Whoa! That was the last response I expected. I thought I had this nutrition stuff all figured out, until an expert gave me some real advice.

I think that’s a danger we all face when it comes to our businesses and careers. We think we have marketing figured out. Or we decide we’ve heard it all when it comes to getting organized. So we just play those soundtracks in our head without consulting with others who may have more expertise. Or we look at a list of ideas from an expert and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Heard it.” And then we don’t implement the suggestions, even though we know they would help.

I eavesdropped on a conversation about resume writing the other day. One man was asking for resume samples because he didn’t want to pay $400 for a resume rewrite. Someone wrote back with a recommendation that the guy spend more, much more, to hire a career coach who would provide resume drafting advice and assistance, recommendations for cover letters, networking strategies and one-on-one consulting. “You may ask, ‘In these tough times can I afford spend that kind of money?’ With unemployment at a 16-year high and getting worse before it gets better, you may want to ask if you can afford not to. A colleague of mine, who holds an MBA from the Kellogg School and a JD from Stanford, has been resisting hiring a career coach for a year now. How much do you think that has cost her?”

What other areas do you think we’re in danger of shutting out sound advice because we know it all?