In the course of my work I encounter procedures, processes and operations which are unfamiliar to me.  I could of course out of some misguided sense of "ego" pretend that's not the case and, due to willful ignorance, make improper and/or inaccurate assessments and/or draw invalid conclusions therefrom.  This ultimately accomplishes nothing more than demonstrating I don't know what I'm talking about.  OR, I could simply ask those tasked with performing those procedures, implementing and/or monitoring those processes and responsible for those operations in detail, and from start-to-finish, until I attain at least a workable understanding of them.  Sometimes this takes a while.

In my nearly three decades of experience considerably more than half of the personnel answering my questions have been female.  An eminent biologist, whose name unfortunately escapes me, once said that anyone incapable of saying "I don't know" or "I was wrong" is incapable of doing science.