I believe it depends on the situation. Most cases, a little bit of research beforehand almost always helps. When you go to the expert, you can talk about what

I believe it depends on the situation. Most cases, a little bit of research beforehand almost always helps. When you go to the expert, you can talk about what you've found so far and how you think you should proceed. This tells the expert that he is not spoon feeding you. It also makes the discussion more interesting since you are coming to the table with your ideas and trying to refine them using the expert's knowledge, which, I have found, is the best way of learning: finding out what an expert would do if he were in your shoes.