As specified in #4832, when running the Cli application, if an exception comes up, the error doesn't get reported to the user.
A suggestion from @adragus-inviqa would be a very useful tool for debugging permission issues, among other things:
"This one needs better handling of the exceptions thrown in \Magento\Framework\Console\Cli::doRun().
Something like
try {
$exitCode = parent::doRun($input, $output);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
$output->writeln($e->getTraceAsString());
}
This will get you the real exception."
Thanks,
Leonardo