Why do they do it? Our guess is that it challenges the buyer and her accounts payable people to dare question any invoices or to compare the pricing with someone else’s.

We know of one buyer who for twenty-three years purchased many millions of tons of a certain type of metal product that had a very unusual pricing formula. The buyer had no idea how the prices were calculated and neither did his accounts payable department. Bills were simply paid without questioning them.

When a new purchasing manager came on board, he began asking various salespeople for the product how the pricing was calculated. He was astonished to find out that even the salespeople didn’t know how it was done, except for one. That one gave the new manager all the information he needed to begin negotiating agreements that saved the company many millions of dollars.

The manager must be congratulated for his courage to continue to ask the right question. At first he was embarrassed by his own ignorance until he realized that those he was asking were even less informed than he was.

You might say it shows more intelligence and courage to ask the right questions than it does to pretend you know when you don’t.