I had a boss—we’ll call him the Leaper for reasons you’ll understand in a moment. The Leaper was a bright guy, a worthy mentor, politically savvy, and generally a person who would look out for his team. The Leaper had a lot of responsibility as VP, so his management strategy was to randomly sample his teams looking for—you guessed it—places to leap.

The Leaper’s skill lay in his ability to detect bullshit. Being bright, a former engineer, and familiar with the problem space, he could tell when he was being spun. He knew when he was hearing less than the truth. Generally he was understanding when he sampled ambiguity, but there was one sure way to get him to leap: answer a question with an excuse.

The Leaper attacked excuses as a personal affront. He wouldn’t let anyone leave the room until it was painfully clear that the excuse card had been played, that it was unacceptable, and that the proper steps were taken to make sure it would never happen again.

For first-time excusers, it was a painful perspective adjustment. See, when the Leaper asked a question that the answerer wasn’t comfortable answering, they did what I did when I ignored a mail: they made an excuse. It’s a knee-jerk reaction with seemingly little consequence, but that’s not what the Leaper saw. He saw the lame diffusion of blame and a weak defense.

An excuse is an abdication of responsibility. There are no healthy excuses. I’ll explain.

“But Rands, it’s really Antonio’s fault! He owns the deliverable, he missed the date, it’s his fuckup.” Calm down. You’re arguing about the wrong part of the excuse.

An excuse has two parts: the content and the delivery. Your Antonio content may be spot on, but the reason The Leaper is going to leap on you is your delivery. It sounds like you’re redirecting, it sounds like you’re spinning. You’re delivering the facts, but what’s being heard is the emotion. OK, maybe it is Antonio’s fault, but why’d he miss the date? Do you know? No, you’re stuck on the fact he screwed up and by association screwed up you, and that’s what you’re conveying and that’s what is being heard.

Yes, with confidence, you can deliver weak content and not trigger a leap, but this only delays the inevitable. Your chutzpah may disguise the content, but since your content is weak and you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, you’re eventually going to take the reputation hit...three times. First, when the crap content is discovered. Second, when everyone realizes you were pitching your facts on false confidence. Third, every time in the future when the same people will be listening to you and wondering, “Does he actually know what he’s talking about?”

Well done there.

The irony is thick. In order to avoid looking like you didn’t know what you were talking about, you opened your mouth and only added to the confusion. If you told the Leaper, “I don’t know, but I will know tomorrow,” he’d be cool.

Life in a big or small company is an information game where you are judged by the amount, accuracy, and timeliness of your information. This game becomes more complex as you leave the individual contributor role for management, but even as an individual, you are expected to be aware of your surroundings and honestly able to describe them to others.

I know that feeling when someone in authority spends 30 seconds looking at something you’ve been working on for six months and immediately finds a painfully obvious flaw. The mental conversation starts with, “There’s no way he could...” and it finishes with, “Holy crap, how could I miss that?” It’s disorientating, and when the question is asked of you, “Why didn’t you think of that?” I know where the excuse comes from. It’s alarmed spin, it’s poor marketing, it’s the uncomfortable admission of guilt.

So, what are you going to do? Clearly, there’s a reputation hit here, so what’s the right move?

Remember it is likely an excuse that got you here in the first place. Someone, somewhere abdicated responsibility for an important part of your product, and that’s why everyone is staring at each other dumbly at this conference table. Take a small amount of time to say something real. Honest, clear, and brief. Sure, these are executives and they might be pissed, but the last thing to do in that scenario is to add fuel to the fire by actively demonstrating your discomfort.

There are executives who like to see you squirm, who revel in the discovery of flaws. While they might be right, this does not give them the right to be cruel. I’m talking about that deliberate dead silence after the flaw has been exposed, and everyone sees it now and everyone is wondering, “How could we miss that?” In that moment, someone is expected to say something. This is your opportunity to say something of value.

Working for the Leaper for years, I can now sense the moment before I’m about to employ an excuse. I can feel the chain of events that are about to occur as I construct my weak redirection of responsibility. I hear what I’m about to say in my head—It’s not my fault—and then I stop.

I want you think of the very last conversation you had, and I want you to think of one thing that you did not say. Maybe you were in a hurry and you blew off someone’s question. Maybe you were in a great conversation. Perhaps you were talking to your dad. What is the topic you should have brought up? What is the small thing you could have said to make that conversation more valuable?

This is everything that crosses my mind after I stop with the excuse. I think about all the throw-away phrases I use where I could have actually said something valuable. I once wrote, “Every time you say blah blah blah, a creative writing teacher dies,” and I meant it. Each time you open your mouth, you have an opportunity to build something. That’s the perspective you want during the uncomfortable dead silence, not the victim-based emotion of excuse.

I’m in a hurry, but being in a hurry isn’t an excuse for not taking a small amount of time to say something real.