Tell me about a decision you'd already made that people senior to you wanted reversed. How did you defend it, and where did it land?

Defending a live decision under senior pressure is different from selling an idea: the cost of being wrong is now personal, and folding is always the comfortable move. The question shows whether the candidate can hold a position on its merits — and tell conviction apart from stubbornness.

• What would have changed your mind?
• What did you concede, and what did you refuse to?
• What did defending it cost you with those people?

The decision restated in the objectors' terms, a genuine answer to "what would change your mind", and an outcome they own either way — held with reasons or reversed on evidence, not on rank.

A position held to avoid losing face, capitulation the moment rank appeared, or a telling absence of any story where holding the line was the wrong call.