[catwind7]

I agree with the first part of what you said, but I don't think plain listening is a "new paradigm", albeit I'll grant that it's probably a skill that can be improved.

to circle back to the original topic of understanding the problem, a big part of that is being observant and attentive to the needs of users. In that context and using your framing of this in terms of cost and resistance, I agree that simply talking and stating opinions is far easier than shutting up, talking to users, and gathering real information about what they actually want