"What problem are we trying to solve?" is a question I have to ask constantly in corporate development environments, and rarely does anyone presenting the task to be done actually know the answer!
It's very frustrating.
It can be the case that people don't want to accidentally mis-state the problem, or get into a debate about the problem because they know people will chime in about nonessentials. I would recommend "Have we written down the problem we are trying to solve? I'd like to understand more." And get it written down if it isn't already.
Reverse engineering the problem from someone's solution is the job. If you find it to be frustrating, you might be in the wrong profession.
I try to remember to say something like this: "This is an interesting solution, but I'm not confident we have a shared understanding of the problem we're solving. I have a few guesses, but I don't want to bias the discussion, so please restate the problem without suggesting a solution. If it's too difficult to explain, I can suggest what problems I think you might be running into." I wish I always remembered to say that. :-)