When somebody brings you a problem, you usually know the answer. Giving it is fast, it feels helpful, they leave satisfied, and it is frequently the least valuable thing available to you in that moment.
They arrived with a question. They leave with an answer. Next week the same shape of problem produces the same walk to your desk. Nothing transferred except one specific fact, and facts are the cheapest thing in this industry.
I am not writing this as someone who found that easy. Answering is genuinely pleasurable. There is a small hit of being useful in it, and under delivery pressure it is also the locally optimal move.
What transfers instead
How you narrowed it down. What did you already rule out, and why? That question does two things at once — it surfaces their reasoning so you can see where it went sideways, and it makes clear that ruling things out is the actual skill rather than an embarrassing preliminary to knowing.
Where you would look. Naming the source beats reciting from it, every time. The source will still be there next time. You may not be — you may be in a different time zone, in a release crunch, or at a different company.
What you are uncertain about. People model expertise as knowing things. Watching somebody senior say I am not sure, here is how I would find out recalibrates that, and it is one of the more useful things you can demonstrate to an engineer three years in who has quietly concluded that everyone else has it figured out.
The cost, which is real
It is slower in the moment. Under deadline you will not always be able to afford it, and pretending otherwise is how people end up feeling guilty about doing their job. That is fine. The point is to notice you are making a trade rather than defaulting to the fast answer because it feels like help.
What I have actually observed
I have coached seven engineers closely — through technical problems, and through the personal ones that turn out to be underneath a surprising number of technical problems. The ones who grew fastest were not given more answers. They were given more problems, slightly beyond what they were comfortable with, and a safety net they knew with certainty was there.
The safety net is the part people skip. Stretch without a net does not build confidence, it builds a very good impression of confidence over a person who is quietly terrified, and that costs you later. Both halves have to be real.