Crowell believes that planning for inevitable market corrections should always be part of client meetings, but that those discussion need to go beyond assessing a client’s risk tolerance.

“What people believe on paper ... may not turn out to be what they can emotionally handle during volatile climates,” says Crowell. “It’s not until a client gets into this situation that you truly find out that the [aggressive, long-term investor] is, in reality, an emotional and short-term investor. When people get into the heat of battle, they realize that their inclination is to change their plan or adjust their plan.”

Starting conversations about corrections and risk early can help clients navigate market downturns more easily and make wiser financial decisions, he says.

Ideally, clients should see their advisors as a sounding board for ideas, fears and concerns about investing. This should give advisors' recommendations greater weight than warnings from the likes of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Jeff Gundlach. It should also help comfort clients when the media hyperbolizes the threat of a correction, says Crowell.

“Conversations about risk and correction need to take place as frequently as the client’s emotional barometer dictates," he says. "If they’re still in the accumulation phase, an early conversation will help them understand the benefits of averaging in when the market is down to add more shares to the portfolio.”

During corrections, clients should be reminded that a stock market index is not indicative of their portfolio’s performance, and that short-term fluctuations typically have muted impacts on long-term financial plans.

Chris White, a Boston-area advisor and author of “Working With the Emotional Investor,” argues that the industry too often frames discussions about market corrections as distractions.

“We too often measure risk by volatility and standard deviation, when what we should be communicating is the potential or likelihood for loss of capital,” White says. “At the end of the day, for clients, it’s that asymmetric loss of capital that turns out to be most important, and measures of risk dependent on volatility fail to measure that.”

White says that it is the relationship between an advisor and client, not an investment allocation, that protects a financial plan from the brunt of a market correction.

Crowell agrees, in part, but adds that advisors too often discuss market risk in terms of account values.