In the conventional distorted wave impulse approximation (DWIA) approach the three-body final state of a knockout reaction is decoupled by assuming a plane wave form for the coupling term. The influence of this decoupling approximation on the analyses of cluster knockout reactions has been investigated for a test case where the exact solution is obtainable. A proper treatment of the coupling term causes large oscillations in the effective distorting optical potentials for the decoupled Schrödinger equation. These decoupling potentials depend strongly not only on the partial wave angular momentum,l but also on their azimuthal projection,m.