I wrote this script to quickly find poles (extra-ordinary vertices shared between more than 5 edges) on a mesh. It makes the poles easy to spot by assigning a bright red shader around the surrounding faces.

Note: The script is currently "hard-coded" to look for poles with ">5 edges" (i.e. 6 or more), which are usually the ones that cause problems in topology. Eventually, I could create a customizable setting to search for specific types of poles. Do give me feedback on this. Thanks!

Installation:
1. Copy this script into your maya/scripts directory
2. Drag and drop this command to your shelf:

import lsFindPoles as lsFP
lsFP.lsFindPoles()

3. Select "Python" to create your shelf button

How to use:
1. Select any number of mesh objects
2. (Optional but highly recommended) Delete history
3. Click shelf button to execute script

Please let me know if you've found the script helpful. Comments, suggestions and critique are welcome. Thanks!