The short version
A question that contains an assumption you haven’t accepted. Answer it either way and you’ve granted the assumption on your way past.
The textbook version is “have you stopped beating your wife?” — yes and no both concede the beating. Real ones are subtler, and they usually arrive from people who aren’t consciously setting a trap.
What it looks like
Why do you keep ignoring customer complaints?
That you have been ignoring customer complaints.
When are you going to admit the rewrite was a mistake?
That the rewrite was a mistake.
Note what happens if you get annoyed and say “I’m not going to answer that.” To anyone listening, that reads as yes.
Why it works
Because a question isn’t a claim, and claims are the only things you can argue with.
If somebody says “you’ve been ignoring customer complaints,” you can ask them to prove it. The burden is theirs. But phrase the same content as a question and the burden flips: now the proposition is in the room, nobody has to defend it, and you’re the one who has to disprove something that was never argued in the first place.
In front of an audience this is the whole point. The assumption sticks whether you answer or not. Everyone in the meeting now half-remembers that there was something about ignored complaints.
This is not a loaded question
- A hard question resting on something already established. If the complaints are documented, unanswered, and everybody has seen the list, then “why do you keep ignoring them” is a brutal question and a completely fair one. The assumption is only loaded if it hasn’t been shown or agreed.
- A question you don’t like. Uncomfortable isn’t the same as loaded. Most genuinely useful questions are uncomfortable.
- A shortcut in a friendly conversation. “So you’re going with the blue one?” assumes plenty and traps nobody.
The test takes five seconds: strip the question down to the claim it assumes, and ask whether that claim has been established. If it has, answer the question. If it hasn’t, you’ve found one.
How to call it out
Don’t refuse — refusing looks like guilt. Answer the assumption instead of the question, out loud, so everyone can hear which part you’re rejecting:
- “That question assumes I’ve been ignoring them. I haven’t. Here’s the log.”
- “There are two things in there — whether it was a mistake, and when I’ll admit it. I’ll take the first one.”
- “Which are you actually asking me: whether I ignored them, or why?”
Saying the buried claim out loud is the entire defense. Once it’s a claim standing on its own, it has to be supported like anything else — and most of the time, it can’t be.