One of the most valuable people in a deal is the one who is not emotionally attached to the outcome. Distance is sometimes the clearest form of vision.

Buyers do not enter deals as neutral observers. They enter with hope. Strategy. Imagination. Momentum. Sunk time. Sunk expense.
A future already partially pictured in their minds. That is human. But it also creates blind spots.

In one transaction I was involved in, counsel and lender counsel eventually asked a devastatingly simple question: What are you paying all this money for?

It was the right question. And it landed so hard because it cut beneath all the narrative, all the effort, and all the assumptions and went straight to substance.

When a deal is emotionally active, outside counsel often sees more clearly than the buyer does. Not because counsel is smarter. Because counsel is less attached.

They are not trying to preserve the dream. They are trying to understand the exposure.

That distance matters.

A buyer should not outsource judgment to counsel. But a buyer should deeply respect what becomes visible when someone in the room is still evaluating the deal without emotional contamination.

Sometimes the simplest question in the room is the one the buyer has been spending the most energy trying not to ask.