You said those are smart people. If they don't understand certain aspects that are relevant, why not try to teach them the importance of it (e.g.: here's what matters when we log, and why; if necessary, teach them how to monitor the system using logs so they see the importance firsthand). If they are truly smart and professional, they should be able and especially willing to learn about it.

But yeah, I think that as an industry we overemphasise (both in hiring and in our weird pseudo-meritocratic community) raw coding skills and underemphasise big picture thinking, communication, collaboration, etc.