Most of the time, when people say, "Great question!" they mean that it has an obvious answer, so much so that it is not so much a great question as a rhetorical question, which of course is no question at all. There are two enormous problems with this, aside from the above:
1. Phrasing it in this way gives a false impression of open-mindedness, when nothing could be further from the truth. It's an echo chamber statement simply expressing the joy of hearing an echo.
2. In a similarly close-minded effect, the assumption of an answer almost entirely precludes any thought that there could possibly be anything else. It is a short way of saying, "If you know what I mean, and I think you do, right?"
Don't do this. Please.
Of course, when (not if, when) you come across something like this, I encourage giving in to the urge to answer the rhetorical question with something entirely different than what it expects.
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