A refresh before operation is a different thing than an automatic refresh. The automatic refresh is basically impossible, as the protocols do not have a way to notify clients about changes.

But the periodical refresh is possible and it is supported by WinSCP:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_pref_panels_remote

Requesting here as well.

I've seen lots of asks about the auto refresh in the forum. It would be great to have auto refresh whenever a file is created/modified/deleted, by any users or processes, just like Windows File Explorer.

Thanks for your suggestion.
We will see, if more people ask for this.

So you have the "Automatically refresh remote directory after operation" checkbox found under Options > Preferences > Panels > Remote ... however, it would be nice if you had the same ability "BEFORE" an operation.

Use Case: If the server's file gets updated before I begin downloading then the file attributes will not reflect this change and so if I had the file already open in a text editor it will not be notified of the change and i wont see the update. I would need to close the file and reopen to see the changes. And even then the file date would now not match the server even though the new content would. If the operation had refreshed before it did the download not only would the local file date now match the server but if it were already open in a text editor i would be notified of the changes too.