What are Leading Questions?
Leading questions are questions which are framed in a way which evokes a specific response from the individual being questioned. Issues about leading questions can come up in journalistic interviews, court rooms, and surveys, and in some cases, the use of such questions is viewed as a breach of ethnics and professionalism. Leading questions may also be used in a more casual setting, such as a conversation between friends, relatives, or coworkers.
In a leading question, the questioner uses language which suggests a particular answer. For example, instead of asking a witness on the stand “where were you on the night of December 20th, 1967,” the questioner would say: “you were driving to Maine on the night of December 20th, 1967, were you not?” The difference between these two examples is quite clear. The first question is open ended, while the second is closed, requiring only a yes or no answer.
Many leading questions are framed as yes or no questions, with the subject of the questions essentially being coached into a specific answer. Others may be open ended, but framed in a way which embeds the information that the questioner wishes to elicit. Yes or no questions are not always leading, but they often are, so they should be constructed carefully.
In a court room, the use of leading questions is frowned upon, because people believe that they compromise the witness and potentially taint the evidence which he or she provides. These types of questions are usually only allowed in very specific situations, such as providing establishing biographical information from a witness when he or she first arrives on the stand. In surveys, leading questions can be very dangerous, because they can be formulated in a way which slants results, and the same holds true for leading questions used in media interviews.
Some leading questions are assumptive, meaning that the questioner makes an assumption in the process of asking the questions. Others use implications, and some are coercive, designed to strongly suggest the preferred answer. Leading questions can also create false links in the mind of the witness. Some psychological studies have shown that using leading questions can actually result in the implantation of false memories.
Learning to formulate questions can take time. People who ask questions for a living often receive special training in how to ask questions, making people like journalists, psychologists, police officers, and lawyers especially skilled at asking questions well. As a general rule, questions should be asked in a way which invites the questioned person to make a response without being influenced by the attitude of the questioner. For example, a parent questioning a teen who was out late could say “where were you last night,” instead of “you were at a party last night, weren't you?”
Written by S.E. Smith
