The XY problem

The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem. This leads to enormous amounts of wasted time and energy, both on the part of people asking for help, and on the part of those providing help.

Due to lack of knowledge, you ask questions about what you think is a step towards solving the real problem instead of providing context of the solution.

Useful not only in asking people, but also LLMs like ChatGPT.

More here: https://xyproblem.info