Tell me about a piece of work where one small error would have been genuinely expensive. What was different about how you worked?
Why this works
Anyone can claim to be detail-oriented; this asks for the machinery. People who have really done precision work describe systems — second passes, checklists, ways of catching their own fatigue — while everyone else describes a personality trait.
Follow-up probes
- What kind of error worried you most?
- Walk me through your checking method, concretely.
- Tell me about a mistake the checks caught.
- What did the extra care cost?
What good looks like
The specific failure modes named and guarded against, a repeatable checking method rather than generalized carefulness, at least one catch story that proves the method worked, and honesty about what the rigor cost in time.
Red flags
"I'm a perfectionist" with no method attached, checking that amounts to reading it again harder, stakes inflated on an ordinary task to fit the question, or a zero-defect record with no catch stories at all.
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