Help me ask why you didn't just
My take from personal experience:<p>Removing the &quot;just&quot; obviously makes it less condescending:<p>=&gt; Why didn&#x27;t you use sshd?<p>Removing the &quot;you&quot; could make it less personal:<p>=&gt; Why was sshd not used here?<p>Removing the past-tense makes it more forward looking (the past can&#x27;t be changed, but people often defend their past decisions especially because they are unchangeable, the future however is less threatening):<p>=&gt; Could sshd be used here?<p>And to further open it up to criticism and add humility (which is important, since sometimes the obvious standard solution doesn&#x27;t scale&#x2F;work&#x2F;apply to the use case):<p>=&gt; Would there be any tradeoffs using sshd here?<p>This IMHO is the least-threatening and not too elaborate way to formulate this sentence.<p>But one thing can make this even less threatening. Don&#x27;t write in on the code review for everybody to see, tell it to the person 1:1 in private and give them a chance to look good to their peers. The old adage &quot;Praise in public, criticize in private&quot; is still one of the most important things IMHO when relaying criticism.