Tell me about a miscommunication you caused — people ended up somewhere you never intended. When did you find out, and what did fixing it take?

Communication failures are usually told from the receiving end; asking for the one they caused tests whether the candidate audits their own sending. When they found out matters as much as what broke — a long gap usually means nobody was checking whether the message landed.

• What did you say, and what did they hear?
• What did the gap cost before it surfaced?
• What do you do differently now when the stakes are high?

Plain ownership of the sending failure, specifics on where message and meaning diverged, the cost named honestly, and a checking habit — confirming understanding rather than assuming it — acquired since.

The breakdown quietly becomes the other side's poor listening, the example is trivial while the claimed lesson is profound, or nothing about how they communicate has changed.