diff --git a/cmd/kubeadm/app/util/marshal.go b/cmd/kubeadm/app/util/marshal.go
index 38b300e73ca..33a3c689c3e 100644
--- a/cmd/kubeadm/app/util/marshal.go
+++ b/cmd/kubeadm/app/util/marshal.go
@@ -70,7 +70,11 @@ func UnmarshalFromYamlForCodecs(buffer []byte, gv schema.GroupVersion, codecs se
 	}
 
 	decoder := codecs.DecoderToVersion(info.Serializer, gv)
-	return runtime.Decode(decoder, buffer)
+	obj, err := runtime.Decode(decoder, buffer)
+	if err != nil {
+		return nil, errors.Wrapf(err, "failed to decode %s into runtime.Object", buffer)
+	}
+	return obj, nil
 }
 
 // SplitYAMLDocuments reads the YAML bytes per-document, unmarshals the TypeMeta information from each document