So this is going to seem awkward and maybe even petty to some people, but I am just curious what other professional women would do in this situation:

Background: I work with someone who has a slightly higher title then me.. I have 12 years experience and they have 16 years.. think of it like I am a manager and they are is a senior manager. We are about the same age difference as experience, so when I say senior I don’t mean like a senior citizen (incase that wasn’t clear).. just someone slightly older then me with a about 5 more years in our industry. I don’t directly report to this person; we both report to the VPs of our division.

This senior titled employee frequently makes stuff up or gives half of the information on a topic to serve her needs, just to seem informed in areas she just won’t admit she isn’t strong in. It’s rarely a big lie or overly harmful, just annoying when you know someone you work with is just ‘BS-ing’ (for lack of a better term) and upper management sees it as ‘value’ add because they don’t bother to fact check her or don’t know better themselves. It’s like taking an opinion or guessing on a topic, but talking about it has fact.

What happened: The VP of our department sent an article out from an industry publication we all receive, calling out a brand that we are in competition with. It was just informational. I wrote back that I thought the story was interesting based on a fact I knew about this brand that I shared with those on the email. The senior level employee wrote back saying ‘actually the brand that does that is ___’. The fact I mentioned was true for both the brand I commented on AND the brand she mentioned, but the brand I was talking about was relevant to the article and her comment made it look like I had bad info. I sent her a text with proof of my statement privately and kept the comment with it light, but I didn’t call it out in a reply back... and I am wondering if you would have or just let it go??

Why it seems petty to correct her:

Correcting her doesn’t actually impact our business in any way, it would really only be to say ‘actually, I’m right’..

Why it doesn’t seem petty:

She made an incorrect statement, but in doing so also implied I wasn’t informed/correct, and the other people on the list are probably just going to believe her because of her experience being ‘more’ then mine, without looking it up themselves.

What would you have done in this situation?