Most experts you admire once asked a question that made someone sigh. Ask anyway.

Expertise is built on a long record of basic questions asked in front of people. Everybody you admire has a stack of those behind them, including a few that made somebody exhale through their nose. That exhale is a report on the other person’s patience in that moment, not a reading on your intelligence, and it is a tiny price next to spending another month not knowing.

Ask the one you have been carrying around, and ask it early rather than after you are lost. If the first person is short with you, ask a second person the same question.