How much of what you “know” do you actually know, and how much have you learned secondhand? Most of us probably pick up a large portion of our “knowledge” from secondhand sources (much like this article or the people we work with). This is particularly true of what-not-to-do knowledge. And that’s great, because if we had to learn every lesson firsthand, we’d go out of business, pronto.
However, no one has gone out of business for asking the question, “Why?” Human learning thrives on our ability to dig into a subject and build connections between areas of understanding we have well developed. Asking why is an excellent way to do that. It’s also an excellent way of discovering whether some of that knowledge really holds or if it is based on an assumption that is no longer true.