To be circumspect is not the same as harboring suspicion. Both emotions refer to the desire to look cautiously, but the two manners of looking result in different moods. Circumspection involves a different mode of seeing, and therefore a different form of emotion.
Suspicion refers to the action of examining a situation from a novel angle, coming from the phrase sub spect, meaning to look from underneath, as if picking something up and turning it over to gain a better understanding of it.
A person feeling circumspect does not focus on a single place or thing, but casts a wide gaze in a circle all around. A suspicious person wonders whether a particular thing in hand could secretly contain a threat. A circumspect person, on the other hand, wonders whether an unknown threatening thing could come from an unknown direction.
The concern of the suspicious is that the things we believe that we know are not as they at first appear. The concern of circumspect is of things that have not yet come into our view at all. While the suspicious worry about being deceived, people who feel circumspect worry about caught in the open.
