A prudent question is one half of wisdom.

A question well aimed does most of the work before any answer arrives. Framing something correctly narrows the field, exposes the assumption everyone was carrying, and often reveals that the original problem was the wrong one. The people who seem wise in a room are frequently not the ones producing answers but the ones who asked what nobody had asked.

When you are stuck, stop hunting for a solution and spend ten minutes writing the question three different ways. Then pick the version that would be most useful to answer. It is a modest exercise and it changes the shape of a problem more often than you would expect.