When was the last time you had to admit you were wrong?
Focus on the leadership principle, 'Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility,' where they state, "We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them." As a leader, your responsibility is to learn from others, just as it is to learn from yourself. This requires a high level of emotional intelligence and a desire for continued growth and innovation.
This question could pertain to their leadership principle 'Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit,' where you may have disagreed with a direction someone on your team wanted to take. As Jeff Bezos said, "Companies are rarely criticized for the things they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at." However, this question asks for an example of humility, such as admitting you were wrong when you did disagree.
Your interviewer is curious about what your answer will reveal about you based on how you interpret the question. Many of Amazon's leadership principles are interconnected. Ultimately, you want to be fully versed in their leadership principles, as this interview is as much about how well you embody their culture as it is about how you answer each question.
"In all honesty, I can't remember. No, seriously. I learned some time ago not to speak with conviction about something I am not one hundred percent sure of. If someone asks me something, and I don't know the answer, I won't present my educated guesses as fact. I will simply say I don't know, but if they'd like me to find out, I would offer to get back to them once I find the answers. I'm careful with my opinions as well. The last thing I want to do is dissuade someone from being innovative. If someone shares an idea with me, I'll almost always say that it is an interesting idea. If they ask me what I think, I will ask them lots of questions, and they almost always answer that question for themselves based on my line of questioning. I try not to be right or wrong. I just try to admit when I don't know something, and then I try to understand or learn."
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