Tell me about a problem your team had learned to live with — you included, for a while. What finally made you fix it, and how?
Why this works
Chronic problems hide behind workarounds, and noticing one you've already habituated to is a harder test of fresh seeing than spotting a new fire. The you-included clause lowers the incentive to perform: the candidate doesn't have to be the lone clear-sighted hero, just the one who eventually stopped tolerating it.
Follow-up probes
- What was the workaround, and what did it cost over time?
- Why had nobody fixed it — including you, until then?
- What was different about your fix versus earlier attempts?
- Has it stayed fixed?
What good looks like
The recurring cost is tallied honestly, there's some humility about their own months of tolerance, the fix attacked the cause rather than adding a better workaround, and the result held — with something to show for it beyond the story.
Red flags
The story is really about how everyone else was lazy, the "fix" is another workaround with better branding, the recurring cost never gets more specific than "annoying", or the problem quietly came back and the account stops before that part.
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