The "misunderstanding" lie

There's an oddity that people are more likely to believe that "there was a misunderstanding" than to believe that one of the parties in a disagreement is lying.

I don't understand where this comes from. In my experience, liars are very common in the world, and misunderstandings generally sort themselves out pretty quickly.

"Misunderstanding" is a tactic used by practiced liars. They're going to tell you a lie that they know they can be caught in, but in the event that they are caught, they're going to claim "that's not what I said, he must have misunderstood me." It's a good tactic, especially when the conversation is verbal and the exact wording can't be proven.

It's also a good tactic when the third party in a disagreement wants to take a particular side, even though he knows that side is lying.

Take the following example: we have four parties, employees A and B, and a manager (X) who both of these employees report to. Y is another manager who is not directly involved with A or B, but has authority in such a way that B occasionally takes orders from him.

For both scenarios, let's assume that A is an honest, hard-working fellow; and B will lie whenever he thinks it's to his advantage to do so.

Let's assume that the manager has instructed B to assist A on a project and B doesn't want to help A for whatever reason. B tells A that he can't help because Y has him working on something important and he can't take time for anything else. This is a lie, Y doesn't have him working on anything at all.

This may seem foolish on B's part. The lie will be easy to uncover, right? Not really.

First off, B is assuming that A will just take his word for it and not talk to Y.  This is unusually common, as many employees are intimidated by the thought of talking to a random manager. Some corporate cultures actively discourage it.

But let's assume that A is a persistent type, or for some other reason isn't intimidated by Y. He contacts Y, who informs him that B isn't doing any work for him. B is caught, right? Wrong, B still has a number of outs.

The first one is that a percentage of people won't bother to pursue the issue further. B and Y aren't being helpful, so A might just buckle down and work extra hours to do all the work himself, allowing B to get away with the lie.

But, let's assume that A is still the persistent type. For whatever reason he goes to their mutual boss, X, and reports the deception. B is caught, right?

Probably not. The typical manager will try to resolve this in the way that managers are taught to. He'll most likely get A & B in the same room (or on the phone) and ask what the problem is. This is where B pulls the "misunderstanding" card. There are two approaches he has to do this.

1. He claims that A misunderstood him. He never claimed that he wasn't able to help, he only suggested that A would have to ensure that Y didn't have any more important work.
2. He claims that he misunderstood Y. And that he's sorry but he thought he was working on something for Y that he couldn't stop.

#1 is generally the go to excuse, because it makes A look bad for not paying closer attention, and it's nearly impossible to prove that the issue was actually a lie. But #2 works equally well, especially if B is concerned that A and X might have the kind of relationship that X would trust A's judgement.

Of course, you'll say that it would never work because Y could contest that there was no reason for any confusion, but you're missing the point that B is an experienced liar. He would never have chosen this tactic in the first place if he didn't know there was something he could hold up as a point of confusion: "What about project Z? I thought you said that was important?" Despite the fact that project Z was explicitly put on hold, it's extremely difficult to disprove B's claim that it was all a misunderstanding.

In the end, A's project is now behind schedule because he spent time pursuing this, manager X assumes the whole thing is just a misunderstanding (and possibly his opinion of A's communication skills has been lowered), and B is now smarter about A's behavior and knows to use a different tactic next time.

How could the problem be avoided?

• Don't communicate verbally with B. Insist that all communication go through email or some other traceable method, which avoids the "that's not what I said" argument.
• Manager X needs to keep track of these sorts of problems and look for patterns. If B is really a liar, the pattern will repeat.

Of course, one possibility is that B and X are on good terms and X is more likely to take B's side when the facts are difficult to prove. In such case, X can even be the one to initiate the claim of misunderstanding. If such is the case, A would be advised to seek a transfer; and if that's not possible, simply keep his head down to avoid raising X's ire against him.