One of the most salutary lessons I can share is to recognise and avoid trying to defend the indefensible. I have been in situations where we have no defense or worse we know what actually happened and know you can’t tell anyone.

It’s never a good thing,  but you can rescue the situation. You need to say “I cannot defend the indefensible – it will not happen again”. There will be a long pause …. You need to say nothing. Eventually they will start to berate you again and you the restate “it will not happen again”. Normally this is enough for them to then say “enough said – I think we understand each other”. If they continue to berate you, you merely restate “it will not happen again” and loop though this until they say “ok enough said”.

The real magic here is you are not arguing or disagreeing and have bought a short window of time to fix the issue.

You need to ensure it never happens again. If you don’t you, deserve to be fired.