In activation encounters such as vocational rehabilitation, clients are expected to take an active part in the process of making individual plans and counsellors regularly elicit suggested solutions from clients themselves. This article addresses how such questions nevertheless constitute expectations of clients to be ‘knowledgeable’, which might be problematic for clients without plans or ideas to report in these interactions. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis, the author closely examines extracts of four interactions between clients and counsellors, focusing on counsellors’ ways of framing or ‘recipient designing’ clients as ‘knowledgeable’ as well as clients’ efforts to align to the counsellor’s suggested identities in their responses. In spite of the normative pressure of the professionals’ questions, this analysis finds that clients are not completely locked into ascribed identities, but rather are capable of managing issues of accountability in situ: although they have no plans or ideas to provide for their future, they manage to give relevant accounts for not fulfilling professionals’ expectations.
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