How to Answer “What Is Your Biggest Regret?” in an Interview: A Practical Checklist

Published · by JOBB GROUP FZE

“What is your biggest regret?” can feel intrusive, and in an interview it is meant to be answered professionally, not personally. The interviewer wants to know whether you can look back at a decision honestly, explain why you made it, and show that you changed something as a result. A good answer takes about a minute, names one professional regret, and spends most of its time on what you did next.

Use the checklists below in order: choose the regret, build the answer, check the delivery.

What makes this question different

It sounds like the failure or mistake questions, but the emphasis is different. A mistake is usually something you did wrong in a task. A regret is usually about a decision, often one where you chose not to act: you did not speak up, did not apply, did not ask for help, did not leave a situation sooner.

That matches what psychologists have found about how people experience regret. In a 1994 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Husted Medvec reported that people’s biggest regrets tend to involve things they failed to do, and proposed a temporal pattern: actions cause more pain in the short term, while inactions are regretted more over the long run. The same authors developed the idea further in a 1995 article in Psychological Review. A 2022 replication found support for the pattern in most of its studies, though with weaker effects, so treat it as a tendency rather than a rule.

For an interview, the practical point is this: a regret about something you did not do is natural, believable and easy to connect to how you behave now. “I didn’t raise a concern early enough” leads straight to “so now I raise concerns early”.

Checklist 1: Choosing the regret

Run each candidate regret through these questions. Keep one that passes all of them.

  • Is it professional? Work, study, training or career decisions. Not relationships, family, health or money. If the interviewer asks for a personal regret, you can still give a career-related one and say so.
  • Was it your decision? A regret about something someone else did is a complaint, not a regret.
  • Is the cost moderate? It should have mattered, but not caused serious harm to a client, patient or employer. A regret that reveals a safety or ethical lapse needs very careful handling and is usually best avoided.
  • Is it far enough back to show change? You need evidence that you have behaved differently since. A regret from last month cannot show that.
  • Does it avoid core skills for this role? An accountant who regrets not checking figures, or a nurse who regrets not following a protocol, raises doubts about the job itself.
  • Is it not about this employer or your current one? “I regret taking my current job” invites the obvious question of why you have not done better at it.
  • Is it not a disguised boast? “I regret working too hard” is heard as an attempt to avoid the question.

Types of regret that usually pass

  • Not asking for help or clarification early, and losing time as a result.
  • Not speaking up about a risk you had noticed.
  • Turning down a secondment, project or training that would have built a skill you later needed.
  • Waiting too long to give a team member honest feedback.
  • Not keeping in touch with a mentor or professional network.
  • Choosing a course of study for the wrong reasons, then correcting course.

Checklist 2: Building the answer

Five parts, in this order. Keep the first two short.

  1. The regret, in one sentence. “Early in my career I didn’t speak up when I could see a project plan wasn’t realistic.”
  2. Why you made that choice at the time. One sentence that is honest without sounding like an excuse: you were new, you assumed someone senior had checked it, you did not want to seem negative.
  3. The cost. What happened as a result, stated plainly.
  4. What you changed. The habit or rule you adopted. This is the heart of the answer.
  5. Evidence that it stuck. A later example where you acted differently, ideally with a better outcome.

Behavioural interviews rest on the idea that past behaviour predicts future behaviour, as the US Office of Personnel Management explains in its guidance on structured interviews. Part 5 is what turns your regret into evidence about the future; without it, the answer is just a confession.

Checklist 3: Delivery

  • About 60 to 90 seconds.
  • Calm and matter-of-fact. You are reporting, not apologising.
  • “I” for your decision; no blaming others.
  • No more than a sentence on the cost; most of the time on change and evidence.
  • Finish on the present: how you work now.

Three illustrative answers

These answers are illustrative. They are written to show structure, not to be copied.

A graduate engineer

“My biggest professional regret is not asking more questions in my internship. I was the only intern on the site team and I didn’t want to look slow, so I spent two days trying to interpret a set of drawings on my own and got part of the take-off wrong. My supervisor caught it, but it cost the team time. Since then I’ve had a rule: if I’ve been stuck for more than an hour, I ask, and I bring what I’ve already tried. In my final-year project that meant I went to my supervisor in week two instead of week six when our test results looked odd, and we redesigned the test rig early.”

Why it works: a modest cost, an honest reason, a clear rule and a later example.

A mid-career marketing specialist

“I regret turning down a six-month secondment to the analytics team a few years ago. I was comfortable in campaign work and thought the timing was bad. Within a year, most of our planning had become data-led and I was catching up. I took a part-time course, asked to sit in on the analytics team’s weekly review, and now I build the campaign dashboards for my unit. These days, when a stretch opportunity comes up, I ask myself what skill it would give me in two years, not whether it’s convenient now.”

Why it works: it is a regret of inaction, it shows self-directed recovery, and the closing rule tells the interviewer how the candidate will treat development opportunities in this job.

A team leader

“Looking back, I regret waiting too long to give a team member honest feedback. Their reports were often late, and I kept covering the gaps myself for about three months because I wanted to avoid an awkward conversation. When I finally raised it, the issue turned out to be a workload clash that we fixed in a week. Now I raise a pattern after the second occurrence, privately and with specific examples, and I’ve found most problems are simpler than I expect.”

Why it works: it shows judgement and growth in a leadership skill. Frameworks such as the UK Civil Service Success Profiles list behaviours like Developing Self and Others and Leadership, and this answer gives evidence for both without claiming perfection.

When the question is “What would you do differently?”

This variant often follows another answer: “Looking back on that project, what would you do differently?” Treat it as a short version of the same structure: one change, the reason, and how you apply it now. Do not say “nothing”. Even successful projects have a step that could have been faster, cheaper or clearer, and naming one shows you review your own work.

Red flags to avoid

  • “I don’t believe in regrets.” It may be a sincere outlook, but in an interview it sounds like you are declining to answer. You can mention the outlook briefly and still give an example.
  • A regret about salary or a previous employer’s treatment of you. It turns the conversation towards grievances.
  • A regret that is still unresolved and painful. If you cannot talk about it calmly, choose another.
  • Several regrets. One is enough. A list suggests a pattern.
  • Personal disclosures. You are not required to share private matters, and an interviewer generally should not press for them.

Before the interview

Write your regret and the five parts on one page, then say it aloud twice. Check that the “evidence” part is something you could expand on if asked. Many candidates find that the change they describe here is also worth a line on their resume, for example a course completed or a responsibility taken on. If you are reworking your resume at the same time, the resume questions hub covers how to present career changes and gaps honestly, and you can keep notes on your prepared stories for each application in your career profile.

Frequently asked questions

Can I say I have no regrets?

You can, but it rarely helps. It tends to sound evasive. A better approach is to say you try to learn from decisions rather than dwell on them, then give one professional example.

What if the interviewer asks for a personal regret?

You can choose a regret that is personal in the sense of being about your own choices, such as education or career direction, without disclosing private life. Saying “I’ll keep it to my career, if that’s all right” is reasonable.

Is it all right to regret leaving a previous job?

Be careful. It can suggest you would rather be there than here. If you use it, focus on what you learned about choosing roles, and make clear why this role fits what you want now.

How is this different from “Tell me about a time you failed”?

A failure question focuses on a result that went wrong. A regret question usually focuses on a decision, often something you did not do, and on how it changed your choices since.

Sources

Ready to build your resume?

Start with a sample or a blank page. No sign-up needed. Free to edit; US$1.00 only if you download a PDF.

Build My ATS ResumeExplore Resume Templates