Listen → Ask → Frame → Recommend

The senior FDE's clarifying-question taxonomy is roughly:

1. Users          — who, current behavior, change-management
2. Success        — metrics, asymmetries, pilot criteria
3. Data           — sources, formats, completeness, labels
4. Integration    — APIs, latency, rate limits, write access
5. Security       — residency, BAA, VPC, audit, sensitive fields
6. Scope          — what's in/out of pilot, expansion criteria
7. Team           — skills, ownership, maintenance
8. Constraints    — timeline, budget framed as economics, compliance
9. Politics       — sponsors, skeptics, dependencies
10. Current-state — baseline, instrumentation

You don't ask 30 questions in a discovery meeting — you pick 6–10 across these dimensions, calibrated to the customer's stated priorities and the unknowns that block your architecture.