Try to offer examples where the circumstances of the disappointment were beyond your control. Apply the STAR method here. Present the situation or task, the action you took, and the result.

It is easy to fall into the emotion of an event when revisiting it. Try to resist this impulse when relaying it. Keep your tone positive and don't present yourself as a victim. The only emotional tell you want to reveal is the confidence you have that this event will not repeat itself because of what you've learned from it.

"We had a research team dedicated to X, Y, and Z. In my role, I had four working under me, examining A, B, and C. We felt like we were making leaps and strides, but we didn't know our findings were based on a flawed data set that another department didn't properly review. We started hitting roadblocks, and no matter how we examined A, B, and C, we kept having to go back to the drawing board. Our halt in progress held up the whole team. We felt an extraordinary amount of pressure for days until we found the problem. Having run over budget, they shut the research project down, and that was pretty disappointing."

"They'd just finished building out our department for a project. We'd assembled a great team, recruiting individuals passionate about what we were doing. Our mood was electric. We all showed up for our first day and the phones were already ringing. But the call coming through informed us we'd lost our funding, and they shelved the project. It was a hard day, breaking the news to our team that way."