Tell me about a time your initiative overshot — you acted on your own and later wished you'd checked with someone first. What did you misread?

Candidates coached to demonstrate initiative almost never prepare its failure mode, so this stays honest. What they misread — authority, context, someone else's stakes — shows whether their judgment about acting alone has grown an edge since.

• Who dealt with the consequences, and what did that take?
• What signal did you go past on the way in?
• Where is your check-first line today?

Plain ownership of the overreach, a named misread rather than "I just care too much", repair done personally, and a working rule for when to ask before acting.

The excess is a humblebrag in disguise, the fallout is minimized or blamed on rigid colleagues, or nothing about how they decide to act alone has changed.