[kqr]

It also gives you cover to ask questions that reveal politically inconvenient truths: you can pretend you had no idea that answer would pop out of it.

(Of course, in an organisation that contains many politically inconvenient truths, you can easily end up doing that too much and people will catch on to it and dislike what you're doing. Another drawback is you have to be willing to look stupid and trust that the stupid first impression goes away with time.)