Asking hurts the people who give bad answers, which is unfair since in many cases those answers are irrelevant to the job being interviewed for. Claiming the i

Asking hurts the people who give bad answers, which is unfair since in many cases those answers are irrelevant to the job being interviewed for. Claiming the information is confidential may hurt your chances of getting the job, or simply get the "we need this information or we can't continue, sorry, it's policy" answer. Lying about it benefits the liars (assuming they lie intelligently). I suspect that offers are frequently based on previous pay, so simply claiming your previous pay was higher would get you a better offer. Is lying really the behavior we want to incentivize?