What would you do? Situational judgment questions
By SuperdayReps · Michigan Ross Undergrad | Wharton MBA · ex-Citi | ex-Greenhill · Former Head Mentor at a Leading IB Prep Service
11 min read · updated October 14, 2026
Some interview questions have no right number. "You are staffed on a live deal on a Friday night and you are flying out the next morning for a trip you planned months ago. What do you do?" There is no formula for that, and candidates who are strong on the technicals often find these the most unsettling.
They should not. Situational judgment questions look like a hundred different scenarios, but they test the same four principles over and over. Learn the principles and you can answer a scenario you have never seen.
What these questions are really testing
A junior banker is trusted with things that matter: numbers a client will rely on, documents that contain other companies' secrets, deadlines a senior person has promised to a CEO. The question behind every scenario is whether the bank can trust you with those things when nobody is checking.
That is why the answers interviewers want are not heroic. They are boringly reliable. The candidate who says "I would stay up all night and fix it myself so nobody had to know" has given the wrong answer, however hard-working it sounds.
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Frequently asked
- What are situational judgment questions in banking interviews?
- They are hypothetical 'what would you do' questions: you find an error in a model you already sent, two senior bankers give you urgent tasks at once, a client asks for confidential information. There is no technical answer. The interviewer is checking whether you own mistakes quickly, escalate early, protect confidential information without exception, and resolve conflicting priorities with the people who set them.
- What should you do if you find a mistake in a model you already sent?
- Tell the person you sent it to straight away, with the size of the error and a corrected version or a time by which you will have one. Do not quietly re-send it, and do not wait to see whether anyone notices. Owning it fast is what makes you trustworthy; the mistake itself is something every analyst makes.
- What should you do if two senior bankers give you urgent work at the same time?
- Do not choose between them yourself, and do not try to do both silently and miss one. Tell each of them about the other request, give an honest estimate of how long each will take, and ask them, or the staffer, to agree the order. The people who set the priorities are the ones who should resolve the conflict.
- Should a bank ever turn down a mandate it is allowed to take?
- Yes. Being allowed is the floor, not the standard. Banks decline work over conflicts with existing clients, reputational risk, a client whose expectations make success unlikely, or a fee that does not justify the team it would tie up. A bank's reputation and relationships are worth more than any single fee.