Our Gemara on Amud Beis tells us an interesting halakhic story about Abaye and his Rebbe Rabbah:
The Gemara relates: Abaye’s millhouse once developed a leak on Shabbat. Abaye was concerned about the potential damage to the millstones, which were made partly of clay and which would become ruined from the leaking water, and he did not have enough buckets to catch all the water without emptying and refilling them. But the water was unfit for drinking and was therefore muktze and could not be removed. Abaye came before Rabba to ask him how to proceed. Rabba said to him: Go and bring your bed into the millhouse, so that the dirty water will be considered like a container of excrement, which, despite being muktze, may be removed from one’s presence due to its repulsive nature, and then remove the water.
Abaye sat and examined the matter and posed a difficulty: May one initiate a situation of a container of excrement, i.e., may one intentionally place any repulsive matter into a situation which will bother him and will then have to be removed, ab initio? In the meantime, as he was deliberating the issue, Abaye’s millhouse collapsed. He said: I had this coming to me for having gone against the words of my master, Rabba, by not following his ruling unquestioningly.
This actually is codified halakhically by Shulkhan Arukh HaShulkhan (OH 308:37 and MishnaBerura 140-141) that though ordinarily one cannot artificially create a situation of Graf Rei to remove odious muktzeh, but in a situation of pending damage and loss, like our case in the Gemara, it is permitted.
What is significant here is Abaye’s self reflection after the incident. He realized that there is a time to klehr a shaalah, and a time to simply follow orders. Though halakhic scrupulosity is praiseworthy, apparently I would assume that Abaye’s post facto thinking was as follows: (1) There was an immediate pending loss; (2) it was a mere rabbinic prohibition; and (3) his Rebbe permitted it. So it just was a wrong time to ask questions, and therefore resulted in an unnecessary loss.
This Gemara offers us an opportunity to reflect on how many times time sensitive shlom bayis questions are obfuscated and delayed by over scrupulous questioning? Using this incident as a model, I humbly suggest that if the prohibition is rabbinic, the potential loss is imminent, and a rabbi has permitted it, do not second-guess. Just follow orders.
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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