A recent interview I went to appeared to be going very well. The CTO was prepared to offer me the job there, and we negotiated a salary that I was happy with, but then he had to go out and consult with the rest of the panel.
He came back and said that one of the panel had dissented, and so he called in an additional two people, a guy from HR and a solution architect.
Up till this point the interview had been quite amicable.
But these two guys asked quite, I feel, confrontational, questions, including 'What's your worst workplace mistake?'.
I ended up telling them a story about how I accidently wrote over production data when I first started my current role (I should never have had write access to that table), and what I'd do better would be more vocal about it when it happened.
What are interviewers seeking to get out of this question (and why would they be asking it in the first place), and what's the best way to answer it?
I feel that the question was a bit confrontational - while I think it's an interesting question, that you could perhaps, chat about over a beer with your friends, in this context it was unfriendly - so I'm thinking that it was perhaps a reflection of the workplace culture. (On the otherhand, perhaps I'm being a precious princess).