A leading global accounting firm describes itself in this way.

“We help clients across a range of service industries develop and implement an improved paradigm for managing complexity. Product architectures that maximize the commonalities and minimize the differences help describe the product or service in a way that is extremely useful in both the innovation and delivery streams. The business is simplified by facilitating alignment of the support infrastructure in the delivery stream through focused technologies and processes, and engineered through tailored business streams that segment the ‘process’ support infrastructure typically around stability, predictability, or difficulty.”

Making sense of business gobbledygook wastes time and raises a disconcerting question. Why the deceit?  Why do professionals who can’t write intelligently, cloak their ignorance in gibberish?

If you can’t understand a jargon-laced business document, ask for an explanation. Smart people explain complex ideas clearly. And good writers can detect clichéd treachery in a phrasal heartbeat.

Darrell Croker is senior coach at Write For Impact.