Definitely. It can help a lot to get to know the details of what's going on and try to make things happen that improve the situation, rather than taking sides. There's a lot of knee-jerk fear reactions that people have to things that have never even happened to them, and they miss the details because of it.

And sometimes, the people around the problems just refuse to collaborate. In those situations, I try my best for a bit, and then go look for something else. We only have so much time and energy, and we already inherit enough intractable problems that "must" be solved to go looking for more.