Here's the perfect response to 9 tricky interview questions

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Ever wonder what to say when the hiring manager asks tough questions like, "Who do you admire, and why?" or "Is it ever OK to lie in business?"

If so, you've come to the right place.

Business Insider recently flipped through "Why You?: 101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again," a book authored by James Reed, who is the chairman of Reed, a top job site in the UK and Europe, and found some of the best responses to the trickiest queries.

In his book, Reed shares one or two ideal answers to questions you're likely to be asked during a job interview.

You don't have to memorize and repeat these verbatim (of course, your answer will depend on your specific situation and the job you're interviewing for), but these should help you come up with the perfect response to some of the toughest questions.

Some of Reed's sample responses have been edited for length or clarity.

'Is it acceptable to lie in business?'

Reed explains in his book that the interviewer is trying to understand what your core values are when they ask this question.

He says you'll want to "show that you leave lying to people who are content to win that way."

He suggests answering with something like this:

"It's never OK to lie. People do, of course, usually for some short-term gain, but I don't think it's ever worth it in the long run. It's easy to make bad choices under pressure, and some businesses are even run in such a way that people don't know they're lying. I prefer to treat people the way I want to be treated myself, and nobody wants to be lied to. Life's much simpler if you always tell the truth. And more people will forgive you for making a mistake, but they'll never forgive a lie."

'What are your greatest weaknesses?'

Reed says "there's no quicker way to break the rapport between you and your interviewer than to give a clichéd answer to this question, or to pretend, as many do, that your weaknesses are trivial and irrelevant."

Don't be dishonest or insincere — but be careful not to highlight a flaw that would make the hiring manager think you couldn't do the job at hand.

Reed offers to following response:

"I'd say my greatest weakness so far as you're concerned is that I've been out of the workforce for a couple of years in order to raise my family. I didn't drop out of the industry altogether during that time, though. My contacts book is up to date and I've kept up with industry trends. For example, I enrolled for online professional development courses with [give examples]. That's something I wouldn't have had time to do if I'd been at work, so in a way being out of the workforce has done me some good. If you take me on, I certainly don't think I'll need retraining."

'What career regrets do you have?'

On the surface, this might seem like a harmless question, but Reed says the interviewer is really asking, "Is there something bad about you that I cannot see, and if there is, can I get you to admit it? Do you carry psychological baggage that you don't need? How readily do you forgive yourself — and others?"

Reed suggests giving the interviewer "a little bit of grit," but says you should never use the word "regret."

"Regret is a loaded word: don't point it your way," he writes.

Instead, Reed says you should "focus on something positive and say you wished you'd done more of it. Then stop talking."

Here's an edited version of the sample answer Reed offers in his book:

"All told, I don't have too many complaints about the way things have gone. If I could change one thing, I'd have moved into the cell phone insurance business sooner than I did. I turned out to be good at that, and I enjoy it too. ... If I'd moved into it sooner then maybe I'd have been sitting here a couple of years earlier — but who knows? Missing out on that taught me to take the odd risk in life, and I'm thankful for that."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider