In this example you're actually just being polite. You are not calling out a person publicly, you're transmitting a course-correction through their manager that allows the person who knows you best to communicate the correction the best way AND it allows the corpo to take the blame for being vague and uninformative.
Sure, direct, cold, concrete, public data is "best" in the objective sense, but people's feelings and pride matter, and any attempt to wave that away is just naive.
Sure, direct, cold, concrete, public data is "best" in the objective sense, but people's feelings and pride matter, and any attempt to wave that away is just naive.