MargenWe collect answers the way you'd hoard keys without knowing any more which doors they open: loose facts, quick certainties, headlines. It soothes us to feel that we “know”. But an answer, by its very nature, closes a subject. It marks it solved and looks away.
A good question does the opposite: it opens. It leaves the subject breathing, invites you to look inside, connects things that seemed far apart. That's why children, who ask without embarrassment, see the world more sharply than plenty of adults who have already “understood” it all.
The people who strike you as especially clear-sighted almost never know more facts than you. What sets them apart is that they ask better: they pause half a second longer before taking anything as obvious. Swapping “what is this?” for “and why this and not something else?” costs nothing, and changes everything.