Help me ask why you didn't just
My take from personal experience:<p>Removing the "just" obviously makes it less condescending:<p>=> Why didn't you use sshd?<p>Removing the "you" could make it less personal:<p>=> Why was sshd not used here?<p>Removing the past-tense makes it more forward looking (the past can't be changed, but people often defend their past decisions especially because they are unchangeable, the future however is less threatening):<p>=> 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't scale/work/apply to the use case):<p>=> 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'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 "Praise in public, criticize in private" is still one of the most important things IMHO when relaying criticism.