You Learn So Much More When You Ask Questions Than When You Pass Judgment
Think about the last time someone said something you disagreed with. The reflex, for most of us, is to decide right away that they're wrong and move on. That reflex closes a door. A question, by contrast, keeps it open.
When you pass judgment, the conversation ends in your own head. You've already filed the other person into a category, and there's nothing left to find out. Asking why they think what they think does the opposite: it hands them room to explain, and it hands you information you didn't have a second ago.
Judgment feels productive because it's fast. You reach a verdict, you feel certain, and certainty is comfortable. But speed and understanding rarely travel together. The quick verdict usually rests on whatever you already believed before the person opened their mouth.
Questions slow things down on purpose. "What makes you say that?" or "How did you get there?" forces the other person to show their reasoning, and sometimes that reasoning turns out to be better than yours. Sometimes it's worse, and now you can see exactly where. Either way you walk out knowing more than you walked in with.
There's a quieter benefit too. People notice when you ask instead of pounce. They relax, they say more, they trust you with the parts they'd normally hold back. You can't get to those parts by being right at them.
None of this means you abandon your own view. You can still disagree after you've asked. The difference is that you're disagreeing with the actual thing they believe rather than the version you invented before listening. Hold the judgment for a minute and spend that minute asking. The return on it is almost always larger than you'd expect.