Innovation is integral to leadership. The interviewer wants to measure your preferred working style and whether it meets their required criteria. They want to know how resourceful you are and whether you exhibit outside-of-the-box thinking.

Some problems arise at inopportune times, and some can only be solved through creative and unconventional means. Whether the supervisor you'd normally lean on to solve a type of problem wasn't there to make a split-second decision or the solution went beyond the scope of the resource material you had on hand, you want your answer to exhibit determination. Describe your thought process while calculating the risks that led to your course of action. Some more urgent issues require us to think fast on our feet. They aim to recruit the best candidates, not the everyday status quo employee.

Being unique in your example can exemplify you as an attractive prospective employee. Offering trivial or commonplace problems you'd see in an everyday setting will present you as an average employee. Talk to the interviewer about a time you solved a problem creatively and the positive effect it had on your team. Make sure your example reflects respecting the chain of command - initiative versus presumption.