From the first part of the sentence, you know how the employees view this executive: “not as incompetent.” In other words, they view the executive as competent, or capable. The second part of the sentence provides the information that the executive also has "vast experience." Based on these two clues, one would expect this manager to understand the situation the workers are dealing with, and in fact the workers do expect this: the employees “refused to believe” that their leader “could not understand their obvious frustration.” The detour road sign “despite” indicates that the executive's public statements were at odds with this belief. Therefore, since the employees believe the executive does understand their predicament but is saying he doesn't understand, predict that the workers view the manager as unbelievable or dishonest. Disingenuous, (B), means “being insincere” or “lacking in frankness” and matches the prediction. Duplicitous, (D), means “acting in a dishonest or deceitful manner” and gives the sentence the same meaning as does disingenuous. These are the correct answers. Guilty, (A), may be tempting, since this would indicate that the manager has committed some wrongdoing. However, nothing in the sentence indicates that the executive is guilty of causing the problem; the executive is just claiming not to understand it. Complacent, (C), means “self-satisfied” or “overly content.” There isn’t enough evidence to describe the manager as complacent. Sagacious, (E), and erudite, (F), both mean “very smart” or “learned.” If you ignore the second part of the sentence, these words would suitably contrast “incompetent,” but they do not align with the additional context clues.