What is a good design pattern for tracking issues in a class?

I have a class that has a custom equals() method. When I compare two objects using this equals method, not only am I interested in whether or not they are equal, but if they are not equal, what was different about them. Finally, I want to be able to retrieve the differences arising from an unequal situation.

I currently use logging to display where my objects are unequal. This works, but I have a new requirement of being able to extract the actual results of the equals check for display later. I suspect there is an object-oriented design pattern for handling this type of situation.

public class MyClass {
  int x;
  public boolean equals(Object obj) {
    // make sure obj is instance of MyClass
    MyClass that = (MyClass)obj;

    if(this.x != that.x) {
      // issue that I would like to store and reference later, after I call equals
      System.out.println("this.x = " + this.x);
      System.out.println("that.x = " + that.x);
      return false;
    } else {
      // assume equality
      return true
    }
  }
}

Are there any good design pattern suggestions where some sort of work is being done, but a secondary object collects information about how well that work was done which can later be retrieved and displayed?