Breaking the Feedback Fallacy: How AI Enhances Open-Ended Survey Questions

Despite decades of engagement surveys being common practice, the gap between measurement and meaningful impact remains stubbornly wide. Research consistently demonstrates that over 80% of companies struggle to turn employee survey feedback into concrete actions, according to Burris et al. (2024), often receiving an overwhelming volume of open-ended responses with little practical value. Why? Because without an innovative approach to feedback generation and rapid synthesis, these insights remain just that—insights, rather than drivers of strategic action.

At the core of this issue is the feedback fallacy—the mistaken belief that feedback, especially when focused on weaknesses, leads to meaningful improvement. While the term “feedback fallacy” is most aligned with performance management, as outlined by Buckingham and Goodall (2019), the concept applies equally to engagement surveys. The reality is that traditional employee engagement feedback methods often undermine psychological safety, trigger defensiveness, and fail to drive action.

Why Traditional Open-Ended Questions Fall Short

The feedback fallacy and feedback paralysis persist for a reason: many engagement and culture surveys fall into common traps when designing open-ended questions. Here are a few of them:

• They make employees justify their ratings. “Why did you score this so low?” can feel like an interrogation instead of an invitation to share.

• They focus on weaknesses without context. Employees are asked to explain problems but not guided toward solutions.

• They are too broad, leading to vague responses. “Tell us more” is unclear and doesn’t direct employees toward useful insights.

• They create cognitive overload. Multi-part questions (“What’s working and what’s not?”) make it harder to get focused, actionable answers.

• Many companies don’t ask any open-ended follow-ups at all. Relying only on numerical scores misses critical context, forcing HR to guess why employees feel a certain way. Without qualitative input, organizations lack the depth needed to address underlying concerns, as noted in Gallup’s 2021 State of the Global Workplace report. Learn the 5 main reasons why engagement surveys often fail to deliver meaningful insights.

As a result, HR receives unstructured, non-actionable feedback—or worse, no qualitative insights at all—making meaningful culture change difficult.

How to Ask Better Open-Ended Questions

Engagement surveys often fall short not because employees don’t provide feedback, but because the way questions are framed limits the quality of their responses. Poorly designed open-ended questions can lead to vague, unhelpful answers or even reinforce frustration. Discover how to unlock truly actionable employee feedback to drive more meaningful survey results. To gather insights that truly move the needle, consider these three strategies:

1. Focus on Experiences, Not Justification

Instead of asking employees to explain a rating, prompt them to share an experience:

• ✖️ “Why did you rate this low?”

• ✔ “Can you describe a situation where this was a challenge?” or “What would have made that experience better?”

This shift encourages more detailed, constructive responses that HR can use.

2. Encourage Strength-Based Thinking (Even for Neutral Scores)

Survey responses that aren’t extremes—neither very high nor very low—are often overlooked, yet they can reveal areas where small changes would have a meaningful influence. Instead of treating these responses as unimportant, frame these opportunities for improvement:

• ✖️ “You rated this in the middle—why?”

• ✔ “What’s one thing that could make this a better experience for you?”

This ensures every response contributes to a conversation about improvement, rather than just describing past frustrations.

3. Capture Moments of Excellence to Scale Culture Success

Open-ended survey responses shouldn’t just reveal gaps—they should also highlight and reinforce what’s working. Positive deviance, a behavioral science principle outlined by Spreitzer and Sonenshein (2004), focuses on replicating success by identifying behaviors that help certain individuals or teams thrive where others struggle. Rather than just addressing deficiencies, this approach helps organizations scale what is already driving success:

• ✖️ “Why did you rate this high?”

• ✔ “Can you recall a moment when you truly felt this in action? What made it stand out?”

By capturing real moments of cultural strength, organizations can learn what works and expand it. To turn these insights into tangible improvements, consider a step-by-step approach. Check out our post on 10 Simple Steps to Turn Your Engagement Survey Data into Real Change for practical strategies to implement these changes effectively.

Why Better Open-Ended Feedback Matters

Refining survey follow-ups isn’t just about gathering better qualitative data, it’s about ensuring employee feedback drives meaningful action. Yet many organizations struggle to turn insights into impact. Without structured and thoughtful open-ended responses, HR teams simply cannot derive the deeper context behind employee sentiment, leading to reactivity rather than proactivity.

Employees notice when their voice is unheard. According to Forbes research by Machado (2021), 40 percent believe that their input doesn’t lead to any change. This lack of follow-through fuels disengagement, undermining survey effectiveness. When organizations fail to act, employees become less likely to provide sincere feedback (or contribute at all) in future surveys, causing a decline in participation and trust.

In contrast, companies that act on feedback see measurable ROI. For example, organizations that close the feedback loop and align their culture achieve up to a 4x higher revenue growth than those that do not, as detailed by Hunkins (2024). This demonstrates that open-ended responses are not just a box-checking activity; they are a strategic tool that can help businesses create more engaged and productive workplaces.

By redesigning open-ended questions to elicit clear, contextual, and solution-driven responses, HR teams can transform survey data into actionable intelligence that informs leadership decisions, strengthens engagement, and improves workplace culture.

AI-Powered Insights: Enhancing Feedback with Smart Follow-Ups

Innerlogic’s AI-powered platform takes engagement surveys to the next level by not only analyzing open-ended responses but also generating AI-driven follow-ups that enhance response quality and depth. Instead of relying on static, pre-set survey structures, our AI adapts dynamically, asking contextual follow-up questions that guide employees toward richer insights.

For example, when an employee provides a vague response, the system prompts them with a tailored follow-up like: “Can you share a specific example of when you experienced this?” or “What would have made that situation better?” This approach reduces feedback fallacy by avoiding defensive reactions and fostering psychological safety while still collecting actionable intelligence.

By leveraging AI-driven follow-ups, organizations can move from passive data collection to active culture enhancement. The next time you design an engagement survey, consider how AI-powered insights can help unlock deeper understanding and drive meaningful change. Learn how innerlogic can help you turn open-ended feedback into meaningful action—contact us for a demo today.