This paper draws on extensive fieldwork to explore the nature, scope, and implications of management preparations for the question and answer session (Q&A) that occurs during a firm's results presentation. Prior literature has associated the value of this encounter with investor‐manager interactivity. As such, it is assumed that there are high levels of managerial authorship, ownership, and spontaneity as executives face questions from analysts. Following on, it is generally assumed that this translates into an increased risk of unintended disclosure, through verbal and nonverbal messaging. However, our data indicate that management engages in vast preparatory work to mitigate the risks associated with real (“original,” natural, spontaneous, un‐staged) interactivity. Instead, the Q&A is carefully planned, organized, scripted, and rehearsed. As such, the event is transformed into a hyperreal encounter in the Baudrillardian sense. Despite this, the value of the Q&A is not necessarily impaired. Instead, these managerial backstage preparations arguably make the encounter realer than real. We suggest that the Q&A that we observe (the “copy”) is more useful than the original might have been. Our work provides evidence and discussion of two interconnected paradoxes: perfection and self‐reference. This study not only raises important questions, challenges, and opportunities for researchers interested in the study of investor‐manager interactions but also speaks to those with an interest in workplace meetings and Q&A more broadly.

Management teams often avoid answering questions during conference call question and answer sessions (Q&As). Viewing this as an information asymmetry issue, accounting scholars have suggested that this behavior is ill‐advised and that non‐answers signal to investors the suppression of bad news. In this article, we demonstrate that this argument lacks nuance. Instead, we argue that answers and non‐answers necessarily coexist and are codependent. Our contribution stems from our social interactionist lens, whereby we draw on interdisciplinary perspectives of workplace silence to make sense of our data. We propose three explanations for managerial non‐answers, namely that they are used (1) defensively, (2) reflectively, and (3) negotiatively. Despite the seeming complexity, analysts claim they can make sense of what managers are able to say in this forum, and by extension, what they do (or perhaps, can) not. From here, we argue that analysts are socialized to managerial non‐answers. Despite this, there is general concern that investors allow an innate fear of “silence” to prejudice their judgment of non‐answers. Thus, we highlight a communication gap between management, intermediary, and investor. On the one hand, this implies a source of market inefficiency, but on the other it points toward a source of potential value in sell‐side analyst work, specifically, their experience and expertise in social interaction.