Why User Research Lies to You – And How to Get the Truth Anyway
Here’s the dirty little secret about user research: most people lie to you. Not because they’re malicious, but because the setting almost forces them to. They want to look competent. They want to be agreeable. They don’t want to jeopardize their role.
That’s why so many innovation projects die in the field. Teams collect dozens of interviews, synthesize insights, and even run prototypes—only to discover later that their foundation was built on polite lies, not hard reality.
If you want to build something that actually matters, you need to see through the performance. In this piece, I’ll show you why honesty is rare in business research, how to design a setting that encourages the truth, and what filters you can use to separate real struggles from social theater.
Why People Aren’t Honest in Business Research
Let’s start with the basics: people in corporate environments are rarely straight with you. Here’s why:
Self-preservation: Admitting to a problem can sound like incompetence. Nobody volunteers to look bad.
Opportunism: People tell you what they think you want to hear, especially if they see potential benefits.
Social desirability: No one wants to be the “difficult one” when everyone else nods along.
Cognitive bias: People don’t always understand their own decisions. They rationalize after the fact.
Power games: Many defend what legitimizes their role. If a problem challenges their turf, they downplay it.
In other words: if you rely on what people say, you’re steering straight into the ditch.
The Honesty Setting – Creating Space for Real Answers
Honesty doesn’t happen by accident. You have to engineer the environment so there’s less incentive to perform and more room for truth.
