I found that repeating back something also gives someone a chance to back out and change their mind. In the help desk world, this helped immensely.

“Why did we lose connection to Sydney?”

“Ah… Dunno.”

“What do your network logs say?”

“Ah… We don’t have logs on those routers.”

“… Okay, let me see if I understand, since I will have to report back to my boss, who will contact yours. Our connection to Sydney went down, but the routers on your end do not keep logs, so you are unable to tell me why. And your boss will back you up on this. Correct?”

“… I’ll look again.”

“That’s what I thought.”