If someone can quickly learn enough about a system that they can convince a domain expert they understand it well in a deep technical discussion, they're probably a good candidate for hiring, since your business likely consists of many complex systems, and the candidate will theoretically be able to onboard faster.
Attaining high level understanding and speaking convincingly about it are entirely different skills from knowing how to build it. Interviews are always a proxy anyway, your job will never be solely comprise of convincing people of your expertise. Sooner of later you have to do exercise it somehow. Unless you're the CEO, that is. The higher you go the easier it is to make a career out of being in the right places at the right times.
I’ve seen first hand people hired who’ve aced the system design interview but then fail to get much done. Building systems in the real world is much more than a few high-level components and algorithms - it’s about all the edge edge cases, tricky stakeholders, ambiguous and changing requirements, sequencing and coordinating small pieces of work.
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