IntermediateBEHAVIORAL
Describe a situation where key business stakeholders challenged or disagreed with your data-driven recommendation. How did you structure your analysis, communicate uncertainty and assumptions, and ultimately influence the decision or adjust your approach based on their feedback?
Data Scientist
General

Sample Answer

I once led pricing analysis for a new mid-tier subscription. My recommendation, based on historical elasticity and A/B tests, was to price at $39 instead of the $29 that marketing favored. My model suggested we’d see ~8–10% lower conversion but 18–22% higher ARPU, with net revenue +9% over 6 months. Marketing pushed back hard, arguing the higher price would damage brand perception. Instead of debating, I broke the analysis into three parts: what we know (elasticity from past tests), what we’re assuming (that behavior would generalize to this segment), and what we don’t know. I translated uncertainty into best/likely/worst-case revenue ranges and explicitly showed the overlap with their $29 scenario. We agreed on a 4-week experiment: 50% of traffic at $29, 50% at $39, with pre-defined decision rules. The test showed +7.5% net revenue at $39 and no significant change in NPS. With that evidence, marketing supported rolling out the higher price globally.

Keywords

Clear separation of knowns, assumptions, and unknownsUse of ranges and scenarios to communicate uncertaintyCollaborative design of an experiment instead of insisting on a model-only answerFinal decision grounded in test results that addressed stakeholder concerns