Ethical or Judgment-Based Interview Questions: The SPIES Framework

Publié le par Pierre-Alexandre MOSTERMANS

Some interview questions are less about skills and more about you.
How you think.
What you value.
And whether you’ll stay calm when things get uncomfortable.

These are judgment-based questions. Sometimes framed around ethics, sometimes around difficult trade-offs. They don’t always have a “right” answer — but how you respond says a lot about your maturity and how you’ll behave when no one’s watching.

Let me show you a method that helps: it’s called SPIES.

It stands for:

  • Situation
  • Problem
  • Impact
  • Explanation
  • Solution

Let’s break it down.

1. Situation

What’s going on? Describe the context in one or two lines. Keep it real.

2. Problem

What was the ethical dilemma or the judgment call? What made it tricky?

3. Impact

Why did it matter? What were the risks? Who could’ve been affected?

4. Explanation

Walk through your reasoning. What values guided your decision?

5. Solution

What did you end up doing? And what happened next?

This works well for questions like:

  • “Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.”
  • “What would you do if a teammate took credit for your work?”
  • “Have you ever seen something unethical at work? How did you handle it?”

Let’s take a quick example.

Question: Have you ever seen someone bend the rules?

Your answer might look like:

Situation – I was working on a project where one of the team members logged more hours than they actually worked.
Problem – I wasn’t sure if it was a misunderstanding or something more serious, but it didn’t feel right.
Impact – If it went unnoticed, the whole team’s credibility could’ve taken a hit, and the client might’ve lost trust.
Explanation – I didn’t want to accuse anyone without being sure, so I spoke to the person first, privately, to understand what happened.
Solution – Turns out it was a miscommunication with the time-tracking tool. We fixed it together, and I flagged the issue in our next team meeting (without naming anyone) so it wouldn’t happen again.

See what happened here? You’re showing emotional intelligence, ethics, and common sense — without being preachy or defensive. That’s what hiring managers want to see.

A few tips:

  • Avoid sounding like you’re giving a TED Talk. Be real.
  • Don’t rush. Take your time to walk through the logic.
  • Stay away from clichés like “I always do the right thing.” Prove it with a story.

Judgment-based questions are not here to trap you. They’re here to see who you are when the playbook doesn’t apply.

Use SPIES. Stay calm. Think like a teammate, not a hero.

That’s often what makes the difference between a good candidate and the right one.

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