Based on an interpretative case study investigating the communication between Danish and Chinese engineers in a global medical engineering company, we identified four key sources of miscommunication: 1) lack of common communication protocols; 2) exclusion of participants; 3) political motives; and 4) misinterpretation of common terms. This paper posits that all four challenges are related to a lack of contextual information due to geographical dislocation and not, as initially assumed, to cultural differences. This finding is essential when investigating cross-cultural communication, because it suggests that we should not forget to examine ordinary communication issues when researching communication between people from different cultural backgrounds.