Interview Question: Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.
In the real world, you rarely have perfect information. Interviewers want to see you can make good decisions under uncertainty—gathering what data you can, making reasonable assumptions, and accepting calculated risks.
What Interviewers Are Looking For
- Judgment: Can you make reasonable decisions without complete data?
- Risk Assessment: Can you identify and mitigate risks?
- Decisiveness: Can you commit to a path forward?
- Learning: Do you validate assumptions and adjust?
STAR Framework
S - Situation
What decision needed to be made? What information was missing?
A - Action
- Gather available information quickly
- Make explicit assumptions
- Identify reversible vs. irreversible aspects
- Build in checkpoints to validate assumptions
R - Result
Decision outcome and what you learned.
✓ Strong Answer
"We had to choose a database for a new service but didn't know our exact scale requirements yet. I documented our assumptions, chose PostgreSQL (familiar, flexible), and designed the schema to be migration-friendly. I built in a review checkpoint at 3 months. When we hit scale limits at month 4, we migrated to a sharded solution with minimal pain because we'd planned for uncertainty."