Boy! You guys are totally paranoid. That is not a good place to be. You can get your clock cleaned that way meaning you can be easily manipulated.
My shaking the apple tree analogy and shaking the apples loose referred to getting at the truth of a situation. Yhe apples refer to bits of information. Business turn arounds almost always have to do with people lying and not being forthcoming as to why the business has gotten into trouble. So you have to shake and shake and shake the tree until the facts fall out. And sometimes, if you are not satisfied that you have the whole picture you rip the tree out to see what truth lies underneath.
Once you have the whole picture the rest becomes easy. Without fail, if someyhing is not right it is because someone is hiding something.