fix: Address inadvertent quadratic behaviour in `expand_columns` #12332

Job	Run time
check-features	5m 21s
check-wasm	5m 21s
integration-test (ubuntu-latest)	1m 52s
integration-test (windows-latest)	5m 5s
test (ubuntu-latest)	3m 47s
test (windows-latest)	5m 4s
	26m 30s

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