Regardless, being unable to hold your temper in the face of a pointless/stupid/vaguely insulting question is a really bad sign for a candidate. If you can't handle this, how are you going to handle it when someone bluntly calls one of your designs terrible?

I didn't mean to suggest the candidate should launch into a tirade or anything, just that the indignation would ideally be evident yet subtle.

>If you can't handle this, how are you going to handle it when someone bluntly calls one of your designs terrible?

The flip side of this is that candidates who find nothing wrong with the question are far more likely to not mete out such critiques. The last thing you want is your organization rotting from within because nobody's speaking their mind.

I don't think that subtle indignation is a healthy response. If you're so bothered by this question, I think you should say so. A direct, honest response is far more mature way to handle it than acting annoyed by the question. I could respect a candidate telling me directly that the question is insulting. It would be harder to respect a candidate who responds to the question with snark or sarcasm or an eye roll or any other indication of "subtle indignation".

> The flip side of this is that candidates who find nothing wrong with the question are far more likely to not mete out such critiques. The last thing you want is your organization rotting from within because nobody's speaking their mind.

I don't follow this connection at all. I don't think that being annoyed by this question is very related to giving blunt feedback.

Then the interview quickly turns into a robotic caricature straight out of an HR manual. Why make the whole situation awkward and probably tank the interview just to state the obvious.

Besides, the entire scenario largely depends on context. I'm sure most people would find it far more beneign if the question was posed by an HR person at BigCo, rather than by the founder of a smaller company.