Walk me through a problem where the standard approach wasn't going to work. What did you try instead, and where did that idea come from?

Most candidates can describe applying a known method well; this question removes that route, so the answer has to show actual option-creation. The closing clause chases the idea's origin — invention, borrowing, recombination — which is the part a rehearsed "creative story" never covers.

• What made the standard approach unusable here?
• What else did you consider and discard?
• How did you test the new approach before committing to it?
• Who pushed back, and what convinced them?

The blocked route is named concretely rather than gestured at, several candidate options appear with reasons for discarding them, the new approach got a cheap test before full commitment, and the idea's origin is told honestly — borrowed counts.

The "standard approach" is a strawman nobody would have used, the fix claimed as novel is textbook, the first idea was simply declared creative with nothing else weighed, or the story ends at the idea with no word on whether it worked.