[warrenm]

>figure out the right questions to ask to get to the solution they needed

This is how Jon Bentley starts his classic Programming Pearls

"What are you doing...and why?"[0] is almost always the best place to start when tackling requests from customers

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[0] my review/reference in relation to this exact problem, of asking the right question

[noduerme]

Yeah, it's kind of meta-coding at a certain point. Business people are great with the logic of making money and keeping customers happy, but they are bad at translating those operational requirements into pure logical processes. Particularly if they expect their employees or customers to use software that they expect to guide them to do things in a set order, they aren't good at thinking about the order from the software user's perspective. So just putting yourself in the shoes of both those people is really the job. It's understanding the desire of the business and seeing where that's going to run up against problems in the real world.