Ignoring questions in a debate is both bad form and contrary to the goal of getting at the truth. Failing to respond is taken as an admission that you don’t know the answer or that don’t want to go on record as admitting something that may weaken your case. If an honest response weakens your case, you should respond nonetheless. Getting at the truth of the matter is more important in the long run than preserving one’s ego in the short run. However, some questions do not admit to straight answers. Here is a list of nine responses, straightforward and otherwise.

1. Give the straight answer. Yes, no, forty-three, and The Spanish Inquisition are examples of straight answers. If you know the straight answer, you are obliged to give it even if it hurts your case. Doing so builds character.

2. Say you don’t know. This applies when it is a good question that has a straight answer, but you don’t know what it is. If asked for an opinion, as amazing as it may seem, you are allowed not to have an opinion. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the world of ideas there is an innate tendency to have an opinion on everything. A good mind-clearing exercise is making a list of topics upon which you feel you have too little knowledge to form a useful opinion.

3. Decline to answer because the question contains a false or doubtful premise. The classic example is “When did you stop beating your wife?” Lawyers say such questions “assume facts not in evidence.” Point out the assumption that you claim to be false or unfounded. Questions often contain subtle premises. Asserting “Iraq is a civil war” as a reason not to be involved implies that being a civil war means outsiders should not intervene. However, outsiders may have compelling interests in the outcome of a civil war, such as was the case in the Korean War.

4. Decline because the answer is irrelevant to the question under consideration, and you don’t want to allow the discussion to go off on a tangent. You may answer with a request to show the relevance. One variation of this is the reply, “It’s none of your business.” Personal questions are most often pressed in order to avoid discussing the issue by switching the subject to a personal attack. “Did you serve in the military?” supposes that the answer has some relevance to the discussion. Possibly the experience is relevant to a question of fact, such as what the word “mission” means in the military. More often it is designed to pave the way for an irrelevant personal attack.

5. Say you don’t understand the question. This applies when it seems to be a meaningful question, but you don’t understand the words used, the context in which they are used, or how they strung together. Offer a couple of possible meanings and ask which is intended, or if the intended meaning is something else entirely. Don’t pretend to not understand if you actually do, even if the question has some misuse of words or implied meaning. Nitpicking only scores points in the nitpicker’s mind. If there is some doubt, try to be helpful by restating the question in the terms you understand.

6. Say that the question is meaningless. This applies to apparent nonsense questions, “Lewis Carroll said the jabberwock was brill and twillig. Was it?” However, nonsense questions may look perfectly formed of meaningful words. Philosopher A.J. Ayers argued that the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is a nonsense question because life is not something to which the concept of meaning applies.

7. Say that you decline to answer a specific hypothetical question because the hypothetical is incomplete, so the answer would depend upon additional assumptions. You might flesh out the hypothetical with additional relevant assumptions and then respond to the hypothetical as completed.

8. Say that you cannot answer for national security reasons. This answer is more credible if you are a high government official, but then it probably won’t be accepted even if it is true. Twenty-five years ago on an airplane trip I happened to sit next to a scientist who worked at a government laboratory. In the course of an interesting conversation, I asked, “I read in Aviation Week that the Government is working on a laser that has a metal rod pumped by a nuclear device, so that the rod lases before it vaporizes. Can that really be done?” He replied, “I can’t say.” Rather than national security, you may cite some other confidence that provides a reason not to respond: a promise of confidentiality to friends, family, or business.

9. Say you don’t have the expertise or authority to answer. This may be viewed as a special case of “I don’t know.” It is sometimes expressed as, “The answer to that is above my pay grade.” or “That requires a medical opinion that only a physician can properly provide.” In foreign policy debates, the question arises as to confrontation versus engagement as policies towards specific countries. “Should we be more confrontational with respect to Saudi Arabia’s lack of democracy?” By and large, those questions require intimate knowledge of the country and current diplomacy, so such questions are beyond my level of expertise.

No doubt there are more responses than these, but these cover most cases. The point is not to make excuses for not answering. You should try to answer, and to try to suggest a way to fix the question if it needs fixing. But not all questions have yes or no answers, even if they are posed that way.