Describe a time where you had to admit that you were wrong. What was it and how did you handle it?

There are a few good ways I’ve seen this question answered, but before getting into the specifics, let’s look at the reason for asking the question. It is trying to determine one thing. Do you have integrity? So that is what we want to showcase with our answer.

Everyone has been wrong before, and if you think you haven’t then you aren’t being honest with yourself. This means, you should have multiple situations to pick from and form your answer with. Since we are trying to show our integrity, don’t pick something where you were morally wrong. I hit on my co-worker who got offended and that was a huge mistake is not the kind of answer we want to go with. Instead pick something where the results dictated the success of the decision.

A great answer would be something like the following.

I created a pilot program at work that would reduce costs significantly for a portion of our clientele. After completing the pilot program, we realized that the quality suffered as a result of the change and as a result our repeat customer numbers dropped proportionally. Even though we were all convinced at the beginning that this was a great idea, we luckily followed a cautious approach that allowed us to test first on a small group of people and as a result our brand did not suffer. I brought the findings back to my boss, and we scrapped the program. I took what I learned from that pilot program and created a new version which included a quality control component. It didn’t reduce costs nearly as much, but the quality stayed consistent. That program was a success and was moved to implementation after the pilot period concluded.

This answer is particularly good for a number of reasons. By stating that you started with a pilot program, you are showing that the possibility of being wrong is baked into your workflow. Then it goes on to explain that you took advantage of being wrong and turned it into valuable data about what to do next. You can convert being wrong now into being right later. And most importantly of all, it shows that you handle failure with integrity.

How would you answer this question? What other questions do you ask to test for integrity?