Describe a good idea of yours that never got adopted. Looking back, what killed it — and how much of that was in your control?

Most novel ideas die in the selling rather than the thinking, and how a candidate reads the autopsy shows whether they treat adoption as part of the creative work. The in-your-control clause blocks the easy version where the organization was simply too slow to recognize genius.

• Who needed convincing, and what did they actually object to?
• What did you try — and what didn't you try?
• Would the idea still be worth doing today?
• What would you do differently on the next idea?

A fair steelman of the objections, a sober split between what they could and couldn't control, at least one concrete thing they'd now do differently in the selling, and no lingering bitterness toward the people who said no.

The organization is cast as uniformly blind, the idea's real weaknesses never surface in the telling, one pitch was made and its rejection filed as proof nothing changes, or the lesson drawn is to stop suggesting things.