Raj30 wrote:
Please review my explanation
If the CEO had not been familiar with success, his failure would not have been surprising to many people. It would have been surprising to less people. Thus the fact that only few people were surprised by his failure is not alarming.
Here the CEO was assured of his success and yet he failed. This should have surprised many people but it didn't. The fact that it surprised less people is alarming.
Hence Options A & D
You're on the right track, but I think you're still missing some key details. First, the CEO's failure was not surprising at all. Everyone saw it coming. Nothing in the sentence is alarming.
The CEO was assured of success, but only to himself. In other words, he was the only one who thought he would succeed. He was
unjustifiably assured of success, meaning he should not be assured of success, but he was. So no one was surprised. It's not that his failure should have been surprising but wasn't. Rather, everyone saw his failure coming from a mile away. So no one was ever going to be surprised by it.