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After Tesla CEO Elon Musk cut off Wall Street analysts on the company’s earnings conference call last week, Barron’s asked Business Intelligence Advisor to give us its take on Musk’s widely criticized behavior.

BIA is a Boston-based research outfit that has analyzed thousands of management statements for clients, such as calls, press releases, and broadcast interviews. Its methodology, based on Central Intelligence Agency techniques, is used to identify language and behavioral cues that indicate when an individual isn’t being entirely candid. (Barron’s has written about BIA before, in “Move Over, Watson,” March 5, 2011, and “Is Your CEO Lying?,” June 26, 2006.)

In the report, written by a 16-year BIA veteran and former sell-side analyst, the firm says the Tesla (ticker: TSLA) earnings conference call was unique because “we don’t often see some of these types of behaviors exhibited so explicitly” in response to a question. In general, when information is positive or at worst neutral, people typically provide information to the extent possible, says BIA, which doesn’t reveal the name of its analysts.

However, when the information is less favorable, managers may focus on positive aspects of the issue, leave out the negative things, or use anecdotes, among other approaches, to appear cooperative. When these tactics are exhausted or ineffective, some may take a more aggressive line toward the person raising the issue or the question itself.

Such behavior is significant, “suggesting that the information is sufficiently negative or threatening that the respondent is willing to accept the potential downside of being perceived as uncooperative rather than provide the information requested,” BIA says.

Tesla declined to comment on the BIA report. Its shares have fallen about 5% since the conference call, closing Wednesday at $286.47.

In the earnings call, there are notable instances where Musk becomes confrontational. At the start, Musk—who had earlier joked in a series of April Fool’s Day tweets that the electric-vehicle maker would go bankrupt—says he wants “to try to answer as many questions as possible,” but immediately adds the caveat “as long as there are good questions to answer.”

From the outset he is likely anticipating “bad” questions, topics on which he doesn’t want to engage with analysts, presumably because the information is unfavorable, BIA says. Accordingly, he is preemptively reserving the right to skip what he deems to be “bad” questions.

The most talked-about exchange is one with Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, who asks why the company has apparently pushed back the estimated date of 25% gross margins on its Model 3 vehicles, and what has changed in management’s thinking since the fourth-quarter call.

The BIA reports notes that Tesla Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja reiterates the reasons the company gave earlier. Musk adds that “we’re only talking about a 3% to 5% difference…don’t make a federal case out of it.”

From a behavioral perspective, this unprovoked reaction is a significant marker of Musk’s concern about the issue or the analyst asking it. In other words, this is a “bad” question. Musk’s dismissive attitude is a likely attempt to minimize the validity of the question or Sacconaghi and get him to move to another topic.

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Not long after this, as Sacconaghi asks a follow-up question, Musk abruptly ends the exchange with the now-infamous “boring, boneheaded questions are not cool” explanation.

This is a much more extreme approach to avoiding an issue, according to BIA. While Musk did not know the exact question that was going to be asked, he knew it was going to be related to capex or capital, so his decision to end the exchange at that particular moment indicates that there is something about capex or capital that he really does not want to get into.

Musk does the same thing with the next question, from an RBC analyst, about the percentage of customers with Model 3 reservations who have taken steps to “configure” the car. Management doesn’t even attempt to answer. Musk implies the question is unimportant because it is “so dry.” Again, if the information were neutral or favorable, management would likely be more willing to answer it. It is important to note that these questions are presented in a professional manner, so the behavior of the analysts is an unlikely explanation for management’s reaction, suggesting that it is the issue that is triggering the disproportionate response, BIA says.

Moreover, not only is Musk’s decision to “go to Youtube”—take questions from investors online—an indication of his discomfort with the focus of the question, but it also allows him to move to someone more likely to offer “good”—that is, easier to answer—questions. It also serves as a warning to others in the queue about what “good” means.

In a tweet after the conference call, Elon Musk said “the two questioners I ignored…are sell-side analysts who represent a short seller thesis, not investors.” Musk went on to tweet that the “boneheaded” question had already been answered and that the RBC question about reservations is “absurd….Tesla has roughly half a million reservations….” In a recent shareholder letter, Tesla said, “considering our capex targets, we expect to generate positive cash in third and fourth quarters.”

Speculating what a person means from behavior cues seems a tough task. BIA’s methodology isn’t foolproof, and BIA itself is clear that it doesn’t make stock recommendations. Nevertheless, a Harvard Business Review paper from 2011 performed a backtest of some 3000 BIA 2003-2009 evaluations and found stocks ranked “high risk” by BIA underperformed the market 59% of the time, over periods that ran from 25 to 105 trading days.

Write to Vito J. Racanelli at vito.racanelli@barrons.com