GitHub action step for golang workflow succeeds for no apparent reason

I have the following sequence of steps in a GitHub actions workflow

      - name: checkout project
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: dynamically retrieve go version
        uses: arnested/go-version-action@v1
        id: go-version

      - name: setup go ${{ steps.go-version.outputs.minimal }}
        uses: actions/setup-go@v2
        with: 
          go-version: ${{ steps.go-version.outputs.minimal }}

      # - name: run lints
      #   uses: golangci/golangci-lint-action@v2
      #   continue-on-error: true

      - name: run unit tests
        run: go test -race -cover -v ./... -run Unit

The lint step always fails, that's why it has the continue-on-error: true clause.

What troubles me is that if I remove this step, the

      - name: run unit tests
        run: go test -race -cover -v ./... -run Unit

fails (which it indeed should) with the following 3 errors

undefined: io.ReadAll
transport.go:417:45: undefined: os.ErrDeadlineExceeded

I am compiling with go 1.14

Why removing the lint step surfaced the unit tests error?