There are a host of questions that are considered inappropriate or downright illegal. Intead of listing them all here I will refer you to the Web Resources page on our site: http://www.professionalsourcing.com/information/web-resources. In the right-side navigation look for "Inappropriate Interview Questions".

"How should I handle them" is a great question. You have a few options and your actions should be driven by both your heart and your mind, depending on the circumstances. Let's start with the possible circumstances. There are a wide variety of inappropriate questions. Some are actually illegal and discriminatory questions while some are insensitive, ill advised or just plain dumb. Along with the variety of inappropriate questions come the variety of interviewer intent. Some interviewers, like some people, are scary folks who are genuinely creepy and are asking inappropriate questions with malicious intent, or maybe they don't like something about you and are intentionally trying to get rid of you. Other people may ask inappropriate questions without knowing any better. An example would be someone who loves kids asking you whether you have children. Well, you are not supposed to ask that question b/c it is loaded with a host of potentially exclusionary practices (such as companies not wanting to hire people with kids for fear that they will be less committed to the company), but that does not mean they are trying to torpedo your interview.

Your choices basically come down to:

• Answer the question directly: If you deem it harmless and "answerable", you may just want to answer it. Take the "do you have children" question above. If it's really a harmless "get to know you" question, you may want to go ahead and not ruin the flow of the interview.
  
• Answer the question by steering it out of troubled waters: If you are asked about where you live, tell them the commute is no problem. If you are asked about children and you think they are trying to discern whether or not you can commit to the job, tell them  you are fully committed and you love putting in 80 hour weeks. In other words, answer the question they should have asked, not the one they did ask.
  
• Ask them to rephrase the question: Could be they didn't mean to ask it the way they did, or perhaps you mis-heard the question. When in doubt, clarify.
  
• Ignore the question: Yes you can (sometimes). I  have seen candidates successfully steer interviewers away from something they did not want to answer. This can work not only for legitimate questions you don't want to answer (use with caution - the avoidance method can go very wrong if not well applied) but also for inappropriate questions. An on-the-fly "steering away" technique is to immediately refer to some past part of your discussion with the interviewer and say, "And one more thing about that last question...". Just don't try that on me :).
  
• Refuse to answer: This is highly confrontational, but maybe that was their intent. Maybe they don't like you for some reason, maybe they are trying to get rid of you, or maybe they are testing your mettle.This can be a very gray area. But if it doesn't feel right or if it is downright illegal, you may refuse to answer. You may want to tell them that they just asked you an illegal question and give them a chance to make it right. As I said above, perhaps they are just ignorant of the law.

Remember, it is your interview and you can control it. If you don't like what's going on you can get up and leave. Or you can sue the company for discriminatory hiring practices. It is up to you (and your legal counsel) to figure that out. But at the end of the day, you should assess the questioner's intent, ask for clarification if you are not clear, determine your best response strategy, and make your move.

I should note here that this is one person's opinion. Please check with legal counsel and check out some of the referenced articles before you go jumping the gun. Knowledge is power.