This article presents an ongoing reflexive account of us as three collaborating academics undertaking research and writing a journal article in the field of management and leadership. Influenced by collaborative autoethnography, it draws on narratives written at the time, recorded conversations and letter exchanges between us as we prepare our work for submission to a journal. Through the process we show how the quality of research improves. We do this by paying attention to the contradictions between the rational expectation of how research should occur and the messiness of what actually happens; and how difficult this was for us to pay attention to. This was achieved during a reflexive process of coming to know and learn about each other in a way that shone a new light on ourselves. We share the benefits of engaging in challenging dialogue and reflection that maintains a level of unsettlement within our collaboration. The contribution of our article is to demonstrate our use of collaborative autoethnography as a reflexive heuristic to enhance research practice in a multiple perspective context. This has enabled validity in action by making explicit learning and knowledge of the peripheral goings on of the collaborative process that might normally go unnoticed.