I totally agree. The best solution I have come up with for trying to assess if someone can learn new things quickly is simply to ask a candidate to describe th

I totally agree. The best solution I have come up with for trying to assess if someone can learn new things quickly is simply to ask a candidate to describe the last new thing that they learned. It doesn't have to be job-related at all. Just the last thing they learned. And then ask some follow up questions about how they learned, why they learned it, and how have they used the knowledge. If nothing else, it will give you a general idea of how often they learn new things.