The problem of opening my mouth

I have a problem. When I don't understand something, I tend to ask questions. This works well for people at the top who know 99% of things. When they don't know something, they can just ask for the 1% of things they don't know and quickly get that information and move on. When I don't understand something, it quickly becomes a rabbit hole because like David Rumsfeld said about unknown unknowns, sometimes I don't know exactly what information I need so I am not able to ask for exactly what I need so the person I am listening to will give me the information they think I need. This results in a lot of overhead but also if it happens too often people realize I am an idiot. That is a problem because people tend to not be cooperative if they think their efforts don't have a good result. How do I fix this? Just "get good" isn't enough but is there any other answer?