HaKsav vhaKabbalah comments on the words וַ֠יֹּאמְר֠וּ הָאֲנָשִׁ֤ים הָהֵ֙מָּה֙ אֵלָ֔יו אֲנַ֥חְנוּ טְמֵאִ֖ים לְנֶ֣פֶשׁ אָדָ֑ם of the people who wanted a chance to offer pesach sheni:
היה ראוי לקצר ויאמרו אליו, מה הוא האנשים ההמה שהוסיף מגיד שאין נשאלים אלא לבעל המעשה (ספרי) אם הוצרך אדם דבר לשאול, הוא בעצמו ילך לשאול, ואם שולח שלוחו אין משיבין לו, כי השליח אינו יודע לסדר הענין היטב לכן הוסיף האנשים ההמה, בעלי המעשה עצמם סדרו שאלתם
Davka the people who have a question or an issue to raise are the one who have to come to ask the shayla -- האנשים ההמה -- not messengers or third parties.
This applies l'maaseh. I did not have a chance to look up the sources first hand, but there seems to be some discussion in a case, for example, where your wife is cooking dinner and accidentally mixes up milchig and fleishig, should you be the one calling the Rav to ask the shayla since it's your dinner, or should your wife be the one to ask since she is the בעל המעשה who did the cooking? Perhaps a better example, which I did not see discussed, would be how to apply this to taharas ha'mishpacha shaylos.
The obvious takeaway lesson from from this din is that second hand information does not cut it. Only someone who is involved first hand knows and can convey the facts of a case accurately and only armed with that information can proper decisions be rendered.
This would have been a great topic of discussion with R Yehudah Herzl Henkin z"l. After all, a major part of the role of a Yo'etzes is to ask taharas hamishpachah questions on behalf of a woman to embarrassed to. He had to have thought about how much is lost when the question is second-hand, because that would change how much a Yo'etzes should first try to get the woman to ask it herself before stepping up to be an intermediary.
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