It might be. Suppose that you're hiring service staff - a waiter or waitress is a good example. It is often better to show a professional respect for their abstraction layers than to invite them to talk about the fact that they're aspiring to become an actor or actress. Asking such a person "what are your priorities?" is first off the invitation, "bullshit me, I want to see how well you do." So they might answer "well, my first priorities are making people happy and cleaning tables." That's a hoop -- needless or not I'll leave you to judge, but demanding that they jump through that hoop to work with you could make you a pretty sucky person to work with, if that's the attitude you take towards all of your employee interactions.
Even if you sincerely care about your waiters and waitresses and want to encourage their acting careers on the side, it still stretches a bit into the unprofessional, no? You're asking them to imaginatively mix their contexts around in ways that they might not be intending to do when they work for you. The fact that you've asked me to simultaneously be frank with you about my external life, and that you also expect me to censor things which might be deemed 'irrelevant' like "well, I need a software company that I can leave after six months because I want to go and build schools in India once I get enough money," or to confess them even though they might make it much less likely for you to hire me, is potentially a needless hoop.
If you're hiring for a job where a) the person doesn't really want it, they are just desperate for a job, any job and b) you don't really care about the motivation of your staff, then yes you've got a point - it possibly is a needless hoop.
But for a lot of jobs, that's not really the case. If I was going for a job as a step up from the one I've got now, I'd be delighted to be asked this question and would give an honest answer. If my actual motivations didn't align with what the company believed it was offering (if, for instance, they were only interested in trying to push you higher and higher into management rather than allowing you to become truly expert at your current job), then I'd want to make sure I found out before I took the job.
Even if you sincerely care about your waiters and waitresses and want to encourage their acting careers on the side, it still stretches a bit into the unprofessional, no? You're asking them to imaginatively mix their contexts around in ways that they might not be intending to do when they work for you. The fact that you've asked me to simultaneously be frank with you about my external life, and that you also expect me to censor things which might be deemed 'irrelevant' like "well, I need a software company that I can leave after six months because I want to go and build schools in India once I get enough money," or to confess them even though they might make it much less likely for you to hire me, is potentially a needless hoop.