It sounds to me a bit that the company had a culture where premium is given on looking smart - so people took great efforts to look smart. Which lead to rationalizations and inability to admit mistakes (I can not just say that I made decision cause I did not knew better, I have to find smart sounding reasons).
Any positions higher then junior programmer needs to make intuitive decisions. Everything above junior programmer position deals with uncertainties - whether it is prioritization, organizational decision (who to hire, what position to put new person in), architectural decisions when working with new technology and so on and so forth. You make a lot of value judgement. If everyone is pretending all those decisions were logical, then there is collective denial going on. That is not the same thing as everyone being smarter then all other companies around.
Tl;dr: A lot of rationalization going on is not consequence of everyone being smart, it is flag of workplace where people cant afford to talk honestly about mistakes and decisions.
Any positions higher then junior programmer needs to make intuitive decisions. Everything above junior programmer position deals with uncertainties - whether it is prioritization, organizational decision (who to hire, what position to put new person in), architectural decisions when working with new technology and so on and so forth. You make a lot of value judgement. If everyone is pretending all those decisions were logical, then there is collective denial going on. That is not the same thing as everyone being smarter then all other companies around.
Tl;dr: A lot of rationalization going on is not consequence of everyone being smart, it is flag of workplace where people cant afford to talk honestly about mistakes and decisions.