What To Do When You Cannot Tell Who Is Telling the Truth
Not every leadership decision comes with a clear answer about who is telling the truth. Sometimes a leader has to decide anyway.
Earlier in my career as an educator, two students disagreed sharply in front of me. I told them plainly that the truth does not change, and that since the two of them could not seem to agree on what had actually happened, I could not determine which one of them was being truthful. Because I could not make that determination, I decided that both of them needed to stay away from each other going forward. Both were upset with each other, and both were upset with me at the time. Even so, the boundary held, and they stayed apart from that point on.
Most leadership training focuses heavily on gathering enough information to make a fully informed decision. That approach works well when enough information is actually available. It offers little guidance for the far more common situation where two credible accounts directly contradict each other, and no additional investigation is realistically going to resolve which one is accurate. Leaders often freeze in exactly this kind of situation, waiting for clarity that may never arrive, while the underlying conflict continues to cause damage in the meantime.
There is an important distinction worth separating clearly here, between assigning blame and protecting the environment. Assigning blame requires determining, with reasonable confidence, who was actually at fault. Protecting the environment requires only determining what action will prevent further harm, regardless of who was originally at fault. These are two different goals, and leaders frequently treat them as though they must be solved together, when in fact protecting the environment can often move forward immediately, even while the question of fault remains permanently unresolved.
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The decision to separate the two students did not require solving the underlying disagreement between them. It only required recognizing that their conflict, left unaddressed, would likely continue causing disruption regardless of who was originally in the right. That reframing, moving from who is at fault to what will stop the damage, made a decision possible in a situation that otherwise looked completely unsolvable.
This distinction has direct application far beyond a single disagreement between two people. In any organization, situations arise where two team members offer conflicting, equally credible accounts of what happened in a meeting, a client interaction, or a decision that went wrong. Leaders sometimes delay action indefinitely in these situations, uncomfortable with making a call without being certain who was actually right. That discomfort is understandable, but the delay itself carries a cost, allowing an unresolved conflict to continue affecting a team's functioning while everyone waits for a certainty that may never come.
A useful reframe for these moments is asking a narrower, more answerable question. Instead of asking who is telling the truth, a leader can ask what needs to happen next to prevent further harm to the team, the project, or the relationships involved. That question can almost always be answered, even when the original question about fault cannot be. Answering it decisively, even without full certainty about the underlying facts, is usually far more valuable to an organization than continuing to search for a certainty that is unlikely to ever fully arrive.
It is worth being honest about the discomfort this kind of decision produces. Both parties in a disputed conflict often walk away frustrated when a leader declines to assign clear blame, because each one believes she deserves to be vindicated. A leader making this kind of call has to accept that discomfort as part of the decision, rather than treating it as evidence the decision was wrong. The measure of success in this kind of situation is not whether both parties feel fully satisfied with the outcome. It is whether the environment is genuinely protected going forward.
There is also a longer term benefit to this approach that is easy to overlook in the moment. A team that sees a leader make a clear, protective decision even without full certainty about fault often develops more confidence in that leader's judgment over time, not less. What builds trust is not the appearance of omniscience about every disputed fact. It is the demonstrated willingness to act decisively, in the team's best interest, even when perfect clarity is not available.
Consider a situation currently sitting unresolved because the full truth of what happened cannot be determined with confidence. Ask what action, separate from determining fault, would actually protect the people and the work involved going forward, and consider whether that action can be taken now, rather than waiting indefinitely for a certainty that may never arrive.
It is worth naming a common objection to this approach directly, because it deserves a real answer rather than being dismissed. Some leaders worry that acting without determining fault will be perceived as unfair, particularly by the party who genuinely was in the right but was never formally vindicated. That concern is valid, and it is also usually outweighed by the alternative. Waiting indefinitely for a certainty that may never arrive leaves the underlying conflict active and unresolved for everyone involved, including the party who was actually telling the truth. A protective decision, even an imperfect one, generally serves that person's interests better than continued, unresolved conflict does, even if it does not deliver the formal vindication they might feel they deserve.
There is also a broader principle at work here about the limits of a leader's role. A leader is not always positioned to serve as a perfect arbiter of truth, and treating that as a requirement for every difficult decision sets an impossible standard. What a leader can consistently offer is sound judgment about what protects the people and the mission going forward, even in the absence of complete information. Accepting that limitation honestly, rather than resisting it, frees a leader to act decisively in exactly the kind of ambiguous situations that would otherwise stall indefinitely while waiting for clarity that was never going to arrive.
The specific decision described here held for a reason worth naming plainly. It was not popular with either party in the moment, and it did not require either of them to agree that it was fair. It simply required that it be clear, consistently enforced, and genuinely protective of the environment going forward. Those three qualities, clarity, consistency, and genuine protection, often matter more to the long term health of a team or organization than whether every disputed fact was ever fully resolved.
Years later, the specific details of who said what in that original disagreement matter far less than the fact that the boundary held. That outcome, a protected environment rather than a fully resolved dispute, is often the more realistic and more valuable measure of success available to a leader facing an unresolvable conflict, and recognizing that early can save considerable time otherwise spent chasing a certainty that was never actually attainable.
The broader takeaway for any leader facing a similarly ambiguous conflict is straightforward, even if the decision itself never feels easy in the moment. Certainty about fault is a nice outcome when it is available. It is not a prerequisite for responsible action. Learning to act well without it is one of the more underrated skills a leader can develop.
-- Dr. Rhonda
If an unresolved conflict on your team is waiting for a clarity that may never come, the Decision Impact Clarity Tool can help you find the next right action. It is free to use.
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