Can you discuss a situation in which you had to direct a project stakeholder toward a different course of action than the one they had originally planned to pursue?

"As a product owner, I often have to give my clients news they do not want to hear. I currently work on an enterprise product that manages the workflow of tasks across several verticals within our organization. The senior financial stakeholder had several reports in mind that he wanted to develop as soon as possible. The data necessary for the reports was not in a place that would provide an accurate reflection of the information he wanted to analyze, and I had to explain that it made sense to defer the development of his reports.

I set up a meeting with him to review the backlog and walk him through the scheduled end-user features that would improve the integrity of the data in the system. He saw that his reports would be unusable until those changes were made. He agreed his reports should wait and even helped to champion the proper use of the new data entry features when they were released. He met with each of the user groups to let them know how their information would be used downstream and encouraged them to focus on capturing the best information possible."

Project stakeholders, clients, and end users may have strong beliefs about how a solution should be designed, implemented, and supported. Interviewers ask this question to determine how you handle yourself as a product owner when the needs and desires of a stakeholder do not align with the most valuable option available.