You get to deal with this a lot in engineering, and it’s also notable that the level of advice people ask for is often correlated with their skill level, with the least skilled people most often asking for operational advice on up to the most skilled people most often asking for mission advice, though this largely seems to be a matter of where the frontier of skill is for them. Part of the role as a more experienced engineer is to notice when less skilled engineers are asking questions at the wrong level and gradually help them move up to the right level of advice request.
For example, I work in software, so a common question from a new engineer might be to come to me and ask me a question about how to write a code that does something concrete like detect a string matching a pattern in the larger goal of converting data from one format to another. It usually makes sense to answer their initial question (“here’s a regex you could write” or “here’s a fast way to match to this based on prefix”), but then usually there is more to be considered. Why do you need to match this string? Could you use a library to do this conversion instead or at least do most of the heavy lifting (tactical advice)? Why do you need to do this conversion anyway (strategic advice)? And what customer value are we trying to deliver with this code (mission)? It’s not all that surprising to find that the operational question really points to a larger issue that needs to be addressed that will solve the operational question by replacing it with something entirely different. The intuition then becomes if you’re having to work really hard to make something work maybe you should step back and see if you’re sure you’re working on the right thing.
I find people are pretty open to this line of questioning as long as you come to listen and not to judge. If you’re going to ask why, even at the operational level, people are generally much more receptive to advice if you come fully open to the possibility that they are already doing the right thing and just needed confirmation. This turns the situation around to something the advice giver can do something about, namely how can you give your advice such that you can encourage the asking to consider the question at what you consider the right level while fulfilling their need for advice at the level they are asking for.
You get to deal with this a lot in engineering, and it’s also notable that the level of advice people ask for is often correlated with their skill level, with the least skilled people most often asking for operational advice on up to the most skilled people most often asking for mission advice, though this largely seems to be a matter of where the frontier of skill is for them. Part of the role as a more experienced engineer is to notice when less skilled engineers are asking questions at the wrong level and gradually help them move up to the right level of advice request.
For example, I work in software, so a common question from a new engineer might be to come to me and ask me a question about how to write a code that does something concrete like detect a string matching a pattern in the larger goal of converting data from one format to another. It usually makes sense to answer their initial question (“here’s a regex you could write” or “here’s a fast way to match to this based on prefix”), but then usually there is more to be considered. Why do you need to match this string? Could you use a library to do this conversion instead or at least do most of the heavy lifting (tactical advice)? Why do you need to do this conversion anyway (strategic advice)? And what customer value are we trying to deliver with this code (mission)? It’s not all that surprising to find that the operational question really points to a larger issue that needs to be addressed that will solve the operational question by replacing it with something entirely different. The intuition then becomes if you’re having to work really hard to make something work maybe you should step back and see if you’re sure you’re working on the right thing.
I find people are pretty open to this line of questioning as long as you come to listen and not to judge. If you’re going to ask why, even at the operational level, people are generally much more receptive to advice if you come fully open to the possibility that they are already doing the right thing and just needed confirmation. This turns the situation around to something the advice giver can do something about, namely how can you give your advice such that you can encourage the asking to consider the question at what you consider the right level while fulfilling their need for advice at the level they are asking for.
Every part of this comment is excellent, thanks.