This comment made me realize what my mentor did years ago. He would have the entire team list all possible solutions to a problem, including the obviously bad ones, then have us whittle down the list based on pros and cons of each until we reached consensus on what to do. It was a teaching exercise and I didn’t realize it.

I’ve repeated it that exercise with junior engineers to great effect. Some catch on over time and start intuitively considering the trade offs of a few reasonable solutions to a problem; some don’t.

I never reflected on what he was doing there; thanks.