What's the temperature outside and other non-trust problems:

You are a work retreat with your colleagues. It's a nice little place, but you cannot do much else beside work. Which is great because the goal is to work together. But then a sudden winter storm comes. The internet goes down. You want to go home to care for your family, but you are worried that if it's below -20C your car will break and you might die on the way. So, you want to know the temperature outside. What do you do?

One option is to ask someone. Ok, but whom? It's a matter of life and death so, you want to ask someone you can trust. You know that Tommy, your colleague from the finance team, is always trustworthy. If he says something, he really means it. Of course, except that one time when he thought he'll be able to deliver that analysis he promised, but he had to rush it and it was quite wrong. It was just one time, but what if this time is the same? Oh, maybe you should ask multiple people, and take the average response. Or maybe take the lowest prediction. Wait a second. But what if they haven't been outside recently?

Another option is to look at a thermometer.

Some issues are not trust issues. They are not a matter of opinion. When you can know something without intermediary, you should be able, and even empowered to do it.

For example, say you want to know which cloud services your systems are using. One option is to ask people, perhaps through a survey. I have heard from a couple of companies recently doing just that. That's asking for opinions and relying on trust. The alternative is to query your systems and get the unmediated answer.

Much of software engineering today is overly complicated just because people treat system enquiries as trust issues. Of course, getting answers from your systems requires dedicated abilities that you want to have in-house. No amount of team building, communication discipline or management methods can replace them.

If you want to improve the way you handle your systems, invest in your ability to get accurate answers from them. It's that simple.