It's right and good to seek help with stepwork. But the point of step buddies, or similar, is to help one understand how to do the stepwork right. It's not to act as a proxy for one's own understanding, as if to say, 'I don't understand this, it makes no sense to me, but Susie says it's OK so I guess it's OK; I must, therefore, have understood it.'
The aim of seeking help from step buddies, etc., is not to outsource the job of learning how to do the process, to get the older brother to write the essay for you so you get a gold star from teacher. It might be said that anyone who wants the help, psychologically, should not be given it, because it will be used as a way of avoiding actually doing the work oneself, and that the only people who should seek help from a step buddy are those who are willing to be so challenged that their ego is thereby eviscerated.
It's not supposed to be comfortable. It's not even easy.
A step buddy who does not challenge and just flags work past without actively engaging with it is not helping. The real help flows from the challenge, as the challenge is what highlights the sticking point. Only an ego can see an ego. Only someone who has lifted the curtain concealing their own ego can see another's ego's toes sticking out from under their curtain.
Similarly, people get upset when, on presenting stepwork for review by a sponsor, the sponsor returns it for reworking, as though the fact of having done it, especially more than once and especially if help has been sought, should entitle one automatically to a 'pass'. It is as though the aim of the whole thing is to be told 'Very well done!', and to be rewarded for effort, regardless of whether any lesson has been learned or the content has been understood. It's common for people to complain or otherwise express disappointment or dissatisfaction to a sponsor for returning stepwork for reworking, as though the sponsor should think or say, 'This makes no sense, but Johnny's been a good boy, so I'm going to pretend that excellent work has been done.' This would not help the sponsee one jot, although it would produce temporary ego satisfaction.
The steps are not an academic exercise. They're not a box-ticking exercise. You don't get a certificate of attendance at the end. The purpose of doing it 'right' is, hopefully, to have an actual experience, because one has actually learned something, and a shift has taken place in one's ideas, conceptions, and motives.
Also, the point of learning is the learning itself; the point of the experience is the experience itself.
To conclude that one is 'not making progress' because stepwork is returned for reworking is erroneous. So often, people 'complete stepwork', but literally nothing has been understood at depth; no shift has occurred; the materialism and victimhood and whacky thinking are still fully intact, on rock-solid foundations. It is as though the aim is to bask in the fact of having 'completed stepwork' rather than to have some kind of experience.
In fact, almost the only lessons that are learned are those that result from the process being blocked by error, stubbornness, unwillingness, resistance, and plain obduracy. The only progress that is made is precisely within the blockage; the progress is the work necessary to remove it and pass to the next level. With this in mind, the impatience and 'desire to make progress' is really a desire to avoid making progress by skipping precisely the lesson that the task is designed to teach.
As with everything in recovery, the desire must come from within.