digress from something
Frequent digressions from the plot make the novel difficult to follow.
All this is something of a digression from the topic of Don's post, but an interesting one just the same.
This has been a rather large digression from the main concerns of this chapter, but it is important to bear in mind this important change.
It's a digression from the key question here, which is what happens when the bureaucrat is unsure of the rules they are supposed to implement.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Digressing and being indirect or evasive
bury the ledeidiom
candy coat
candy coating
candy-coated
circumlocution
circumlocutory
get on to/onto something
glancingly
gloss over something
go off on a tangentidiom
hedging
implicit
mealy-mouthed
obscure
parry
prevaricate
stray
tangent
unexpressed
unvoiced