Interview Questions › Behavioral

Earn Trust after a mistake

Tell me about a time you lost the trust of a stakeholder or team. How did you earn it back?

Context

What the interviewer is testing: Earn Trust: listening, speaking candidly and being self-critical.

Clarifying questions to ask first

• What did you do that broke trust?
• How did you find out?
• How do you know trust was restored?

How to approach it

1. Pick one real, specific story (not a hypothetical or a summary of many)
2. Set the scene in two or three sentences, including the stakes
3. Spend most of the time on what you personally did and why
4. End with a measurable result and what you learned

Framework: STAR: Situation -> Task -> Action -> Result, with a short reflection at the end

Sample answer

• Owns the cause
• Consistent actions over time
• Evidence of restored trust

1. Situation: specific context, their role, and why it mattered (stakes)
2. Task: what they personally owned
3. Action: concrete steps they took, decisions and trade-offs, using "I" not "we"
4. Result: measurable outcome, plus what they learned or would do differently

Names their mistake candidly, the direct conversation they had, consistent actions over weeks, and clear evidence the relationship recovered.

What interviewers look for

• Earn Trust
• Self-awareness
• Relationship building