When have you needed to be at your most tactful in your work?

A question asking for unusual examples of behaviour can take us by surprise, so it is good to plan for a curve-ball question like this that can come out of the blue. The interviewer will be interested to see what kind of answer you come up with and will be able to gauge if exhibiting tactful behaviour is something that you do regularly. It may be a very relevant question if your new team is full of prickly characters but probably means that the new job involves dealing with clients, colleagues or customers who will respond to you being tactful. Perhaps you have had experience of answering customers’ queries about what suits them in the past or have had to give advice to people that they did not want to hear. Try to think about work situations where you were able to convey sensitive information smoothly and easily. Have you ever had to give feedback to people working for you or to those in your team? Have you smoothed over awkward incidents between colleagues to keep the peace? Any of these examples would be good to include in your answer.