I think one of the hardest parts of becoming an expert in a technical area is the transition from "I don't understand so I must be wrong" to "I don't understand

I think one of the hardest parts of becoming an expert in a technical area is the transition from "I don't understand so I must be wrong" to "I don't understand so something must be wrong or I'm not seeing something". When you're more junior you often make the mistake of wrongly dismissing ideas because you think you are very clever. I find that by the time you unlearn this, you typically should reverse direction. Early in my career, every time something didn't make sense, it's because I had a misunderstanding of how things really worked. Much later in my career I started to realize more and more often when I said "this doesn't make sense" I would start assuming I was the one missing something, only to time and time again uncover some one else had messed up or that something else was fundamentally wrong. Obviously even the most expert in their field should reserve some probability that they are misunderstanding, but learning to recognize that you are an expert and that you not understanding something is in fact smoke is an important late career skill.