The smartest people I know are unafraid to ask questions and appear ignorant. Sort-of-smart people stop too quickly when they hit roadblocks.

I see this often in my line of work. Someone will do a trial of our product and, instead of asking questions, will white-knuckle reading the documentation, and when they get stuck, assume it can't be done and quit. It drives me insane.

I should say there are tiers to practical intelligence, and this band drives me nuts the most. These are usually people that are just smart enough to do something kind of technical. They also are just smart enough that they start to think of everyone around them as not particularly smart and behave condescendingly. They're not quite smart enough, though, to know how to work around these roadblocks.

I was on a call recently where we were getting feedback on how we did compared to other players in the market, and they dinged us for something we did. It required a small configuration change that wasn't obvious to them as people unfamiliar with the product. So they simply said we couldn't do it. I immediately turned it up, shared my screen, and said, "We can absolutely do it! It's right here!" Crickets. Problem solved, but this kind of interaction was constant.

Be smart. Ask more questions. Definitely ask questions when you've hit a roadblock on a problem.