I was really starting to feel like Abe Simpson at one point and then I read From Good to Great. The central thesis of that book is that you might work at a good company that avoids confronting 'brutal facts' but you will never find a Great company that does.

You have to slay bad things to make a great company, and you have to identify them before they're chewing on something vital. Which means going out of your way to speculate about whether things are actually bad or just annoying.