>I see this myself at some of my small business clients with whom I've worked for years, and know well. Sometimes the owner will ask my opinion about some aspect of their business *completely* unrelated to IT, because they feel a need for an outsider's take.
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>One thing I'd be wary of is labeling people "business stiffs" and "geeks". Fellow geeks are fun to work with, but you've got to keep touch with how you add value, and fundamentally you can only do that by working with the business people. It pays to be the "big-picture" guy in a group of geeks.

Actually, I think it's part of our job to learn how a business works - how else does one write code for bizobjects :). You need to understand the thing before you can code it well. Doesn't mean you can't start right away, but you'll have to learn how it breathes. Sooner or later, going from project to project, we gain some insight into things in general. That may be at intuitive level (I know but can't explain) or just at verbal level (I can talk about it but don't act on it), but most of the time we just see how things work, or can make an educated guess, ask the right questions and, yes, sometimes have that outsider's look into our own affairs.