Why Open Questions Beat Leading Ones
Launch library · evergreen read
A leading question, one that already contains an assumption about the answer, tends to produce confirmation rather than new information from the person being asked. The speaker simply agrees or disagrees with a version already suggested to them, rather than offering their own account from scratch in their own words.
Open questions, by contrast, leave room for a speaker to shape the answer entirely themselves without any prompting toward a particular conclusion. This often produces detail an interviewer would never have thought to ask about directly, because it had not occurred to them as a possibility worth suggesting in the first place.
Interviewers accustomed to everyday conversation, where leading questions are common and mostly harmless in casual settings, often need deliberate practice to unlearn the habit. Oral history depends specifically on the speaker's own framing rather than the interviewer's assumptions being quietly confirmed through carefully worded prompts disguised as curiosity.