Casual Conversation

Just call them out on their shit.

"Listen, you droopy-jawed sack of shit. Every poorly thought out, caveman grunted word that leaves your cat shit smelling mouth is filled with such bullshit that you could fertilize a farm that would feed the country of North Macedonia for a decade. Now sew up your rock-salt looking crusty lips, so no one has to hear you spew your lies likes they are a fire hose draining a tank full of your crippling insecurities. "

Friendly:

• we have different observations
• our experience differs
• could you share your data? I'm surprised by the results
• we have different expectations, could you give us more background on how you arrived at

Distant / British

• we eagerly await your results
• that's a brave observation
• a bold relationship with reality

Corporate war:

• help us reconcile our records with your reports
• can you reaffirm the commitment dates?
• I've CCed your partner/CEO to bring help you back into compliance

I don't have the patience for this shit. I quit! 🖕🏻

I like, "I'm sorry - am I misunderstanding something?" And then give your evidence they're lying.

Leaves the door open for you to be wrong (because you could be) but puts them on blast because they know you've seen through their bullshit.

If it's more formal, you don't say anything. In almost all cases where someone would be tempted to lie, I should already know what the correct information is before I even asked a question.

In less formal situations, I would just keep asking follow-up questions. Lies are generally very shallow.

Edit: My point is that there are methods to call someone out without actually making direct accusations. Accusations are "hostile" and not generally worth derailing a meeting for something that can be dealt with later.

Depends what matters in that context. If it's just the facts, then just quote them if you can. If you must, for whatever reason, point it out you just paraphrase their statement coupled with the the facts, like for example "You stated this thing happened, however we found the other thing to have occurred". Don't explicitly say that they lied, leave room for interpretation, perhaps there was a mistake.

That doesn’t align with the information we have.

"I trust you, but I still need to verify."

„That might not be entirely accurate”.

"Just to make sure we're on the same page.." is something I write a lot

The most corporate of corporate ways is to say that what the other party is saying doesn’t align with your experience/observations. In specific circumstances, though, you can (and should) challenge it as bluntly as possible.

Example…person A says “My local users have been running their Dell Precision 7780 laptops with 65W power bricks and no performance impact.” Person B says “that’s not possible, they’re equipped with i9 CPUs, RTX 5000 GPUs, and come with 200W power bricks.”

Example: A says “I asked you for this load balancer configuration a month ago and you never did it. I’m copying our managers so they can see that you’re the one holding up the process.” Person B says “I told you via your service ticket that it was done within a couple hours and requested feedback. Here’s a screenshot of the ticket’s chat log, which explicitly says that it’s done and you need to add the DNS entry to make it work. Here’s a timestamped screenshot of my command line showing that you haven’t done that. Here’s a screenshot of my /etc/hosts file and browser showing what it looks like when the DNS entry is correct. This whole thing could have been handled with a 3-line Teams chat, no need to escalate.”

"I don't think that aligns with my experience". For some reason, people find I statements less abrasive, so they tend to be a bit slower to harden up against them. Best done with specific examples, even better with receipts, because people are more than likely going to want to know what you're talking about about.

"Hm. Why do you say that?" "Interesting. Can you explain that to me?"

Another one I heard is "We don't have the exactly same understanding"