“Would love to know your opinion on this.”

Why do people with a background in business speak without personal pronouns?

I’m not talking about always in everyday life, but they certainly do it nearly constantly in business settings.

And by “background in business”, I specifically mean having some kind of formal training, like an MBA, other business focused degree, or even just sufficient time in private equity / finance / operations / etc.

Speaking without personal pronouns is like an unspoken marker of belonging in the field. If you ever hear someone go a whole minute without using “I”, “we”, or “me”, odds are they’ve got an MBA.

And… I don’t get it?

The best explanation I have is that it lets you distance yourself from the things you’re saying and/or requesting. That way, especially if it’s tough or unwelcome news, the recipient might be less likely to assign negative associations to you as the messenger. But is that really effective enough to warrant such a departure from usual speech?

This can feel especially jaring coming from a scientific background, where vociferous—and impersonal!—debate is not only common, but lauded. In those get-to-the-truth-as-quickly-as-possible discussions, clearly voicing your own opinions, and distinguishing them from the precise, but subtly different, thoughts you believe inhabit the heads of your fellows is practically a necessary move. But then again, in those debates, there isn’t any penalty for being wrong, only for being unable to change your mind once you’ve been conclusively proven to be so.

And maybe that’s another reason for the extinction of personal pronouns in business-speak: as a form of reputational protection?

After all, if you blurt out a “Think we should choose Option A.” and that turns out to be a dumb idea, who knows? Maybe you were merely expressing that someone else thought it should have been chosen. After all, you didn’t say “I think we should…”.

Or is there something else that I’m missing about all this?