Based on the no-outflow assumption, we investigate steady-state, axisymmetric, optically thin accretion flows in spherical coordinates. By comparing the vertically integrated advective cooling rate with the viscous heating rate, we find that the former is generally less than 30% of the latter, which indicates that the advective cooling itself cannot balance the viscous heating. As a consequence, for radiatively inefficient flows with low accretion rates such as M <, ~ 10 super(-3) M sub(Edd), where M sub(Edd) is the Eddington accretion rate, the viscous heating rate will be larger than the sum of the advective cooling rate and the radiative cooling one. Thus, no thermal equilibrium can be established under the no-outflow assumption. We therefore argue that in such cases outflows ought to occur and take away more than 70% of the thermal energy generated by viscous dissipation. Similarly, for optically thick flows with extremely large accretion rates such as M > ~ 10 M sub(Edd), outflows should also occur owing to the limited advection and the low efficiency of radiative cooling. Our results may help to understand the mechanism of outflows found in observations and numerical simulations.