Avoiding the Entrapment Question
Launch library · evergreen read
A question deliberately constructed so that any answer damages the subject, regardless of what they actually say, crosses from legitimate challenge into something closer to a trap, and most ethical frameworks around interviewing treat this technique as fundamentally out of bounds. Recognising the pattern in one's own draft questions takes real, deliberate self scrutiny.
The distinction from a genuinely difficult but fair question lies in intent: a fair question seeks a true answer, whatever that answer turns out to be, while an entrapment question is constructed to produce a predetermined, damaging outcome no matter how the subject responds. A subject can sense, often quite quickly, when a question was built to trap rather than to learn.
Even where a subject deserves rigorous scrutiny, that scrutiny can be pursued through fair, difficult questions rather than through a rigged one, preserving the basic legitimacy of the exchange and the eventual credibility of whatever answer is obtained. That legitimacy, once lost, is difficult to recover for the remainder of the sitting.