which matters more: explaining your thinking vs. having the best answer?

for context: i’m an international candidate currently interviewing for data/analytics roles. i’ve been wondering how much more emphasis there is on how you explain your thinking vs. just getting the correct answer.

maybe it’s because of the companies i’ve mostly interviewed for, but i noticed that for a lot of US interviews for data roles, the initial answer feels like just the starting point.

like for SQL rounds, what usually happens is after getting a working query, the discussion involves a lot of follow-ups. examples i can think of are defining certain metrics, edge cases, issues.

and it’s the same with product/analytics questions. i’ve been interrogated more and more on how i justify a metric or how i adapt depending on new constraints introduced by the interviewer.

just comparing it to when i stay quiet while thinking. i think it tends to work against me more in remote interviews. if i’m not actively walking through my thought process, i feel like interviewers interpret that as me being stuck.

so far, i keep practicing walking through my thought process, like saying assumptions before jumping into SQL.

any tips or advice from those interviewing in the US? (or globally) is your experience similar, where you focus more on communication and reasoning than getting the “perfect” answer ?