I can understand your immense frustration with this. I agree one hundred percent. Don't ask questions if you don't want answers.

In my former life, as a middle manager running a large-ish department with staff in various locations around the world, I often had to conduct interviews. HR invariably poked their nose in, asking why I omitted dumb-arse questions like "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "Do you feel you work better as an individual or as part of a team?" The former question is impossible to answer unless you're an Old Testament prophet. The latter question is pointless, because almost all candidates hedge their bets by saying "Either" which tells the interviewer precisely nothing. There were lots of ways I pissed off HR, mainly by treating my staff like human beings not bureaucratic lines on a spreadsheet, but that's a rant for another day.

Because I despise the idiocy of corporate culture, and because I think interview situations are often little more than theatre, I did all I could to headhunt within the company, talking to potential candidates in corridors or in the staff room, asking them about themselves in casual conversation, with them being unaware they were being covertly interviewed. Then when a vacancy in our department came up, I'd nudge my preferred candidate (not directly of course) to apply and go through the formality of the interview. Because of my secretive recruitment process, people used to say joining my department was like joining MI6.