No sure under which situation, but I was told by a co-worker to "blame myself (first)" for any confusion.

It takes some practice, but it really works.

Here is the latest eample. An "unpaid" invoice caught my attention, which was issued more than a month ago. So, I decided to email out a reminder.

Dear L,

May I remind you ...

Wait, a small voice told me, what IF she has paid?

So, the email went out as follows.

Dear L,

Would you be kind enough to check the payment status of this invoice, since I have not recieved the payment.

By saying I "have not received the payment," I do not "blame" L for not making the payment. It so happened that L did make the payment, but I credited it to another client at the same institue (because I rounded up total word count to 6,500, a lesson learnt).

So, try this next time, and you will make others happier by "blaming" yourself.

ps. Actually, this thought came to me yesterday, when a new client blamed the translation company for not doing a good job, etc. I thought, wait a minute, why don't you blame yourself for xxx.

pps. This really helps in the situation when you think the journal reviewers misunderstood you. Blame yourself even when it's not your fault!