Focus on the insight, not the errors.

From The internet has made defensive writers of us all by Paul Chiusano. In the comments there is a marvelous aphorism regarding conversations and arguments:

Find the insight, not the error.

I would modify it slightly. It is important to identify the technical errors in an argument but it is even more important to glean the insight. I would go with

Focus on the insight, not the errors.

It drives me crazy when, in attempting to communicate some complex abstraction, I use an analogy or metaphor and the user focuses on the details of the metaphor rather than on the concept being conveyed.