LEAF
 

How to handle tricky questions

You may be asked some tricky questions that ordinarily you might wish to avoid, however, to retain the trust and confidence of your audience, you need to be prepared to answer these questions. Prepare yourself so that you can provide concise, confident and carefully considered answers should this occur.

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Try This

Think about your topic and your audience

Write down the question you would least like to be asked

Try and answer the first one in 10, 20 and then 40 seconds

Think for two minutes

  • Did you keep calm?
  • Was it concise?
  • Was it appropriate for the audience in question?
  • Was it positive?
  • Did you get your point across?
  • Did you answer the question?

If you answer no to any of the above, repeat

Examples

Whilst all questions will be specific to your topic, farm or area of research, there are a number of areas of agriculture that can be particularly controversial. Here are some examples of tricky questions that might be asked on farm walks and some suggested responses. Click on a question below to watch the video and then think about what your response would be.

CPA Toolkit

To watch further videos from this playlist then click here.

Why do you produce meat when it is so bad for the environment and climate change?

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Why is this important? Surely this is obvious and not new knowledge?

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Why on the news do I keep seeing animals being treated badly on farms?

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Do you love your animals?

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Doesn't it make you really sad to send your animals to the abattoir?

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Genetic Modification is against nature so why are you doing it?

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What practical implications will your findings have for farming?

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Why are we wasting money on this research?

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Why are you not an organic farmer?

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Why as a farmer do you get subsidies?

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Why do you grow maize for energy when you could be growing food?

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Response First Aid Kit

Things can go wrong. Or we just do not know the answer. This might feel awkward, but you can overcome the problem. Here is a Response First Aid Kit to give you some handy hints on dealing with tricky questions.

  1. Response First Aid Kit [.pdf, 280.289 KB]

    Download now