One day, he said, with a slightly frustrated tone, something along the lines of : "Andy: you're providing what appear to be good options and detail here - but someone in a "senior" position should recommend a path forward. Don't just give me 3 options that I need to then go and figure out for myself."
from that point on I've always tried to provide a hard recommendation - and rationale that includes a sort of decision tree approach. "We start with ______ [with good reasons to do so] then if X comes to pass we continue with it and if Y comes to pass we can pick a a different path with another option I have as backup."
The result seems to often be a discussion more about the upsides/downsides and decision tree relative to the business the organization is trying to support (a good thing) vs technical merits of the options which the technical team is trusted to be well versed in.