Describe a decision with incomplete information

Q: Describe a decision with incomplete information

This is a Behavioral & Leadership interview question from Amazon for Machine Learning Engineer roles. View the full question and solution on PracHub.

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Question

Behavioral: Decision-Making Without Complete Information (Machine Learning Engineer)

Provide a specific example of a time you made an important decision despite incomplete information. Structure your answer so a first-time reader understands the context and your reasoning.

Prompt

Address the following points:

Context
- What was the team, product, and goal? What constraints existed (time, compute, data quality/latency)?
Options Considered
- List at least two viable alternatives and the status quo (do nothing or delay).
Assumptions and Risks
- What did you believe to be true? What could go wrong (customer impact, latency/SLO, revenue, fairness, compliance, on-call risk)?
Just-Enough Data
- How did you quickly gather evidence (log replay, A/B canary, offline metrics, back-of-the-envelope estimates) to reduce uncertainty?
Decision and Rationale
- Which option did you choose and why? Was it reversible? What guardrails did you set?
Outcome
- What happened (metrics, customer impact, operational results)? Be specific.
Retrospective
- What would you do differently? How did you mitigate downsides and institutionalize the learning?

Describe a decision with incomplete information

Behavioral: Decision-Making Without Complete Information (Machine Learning Engineer)

Prompt

Solution (Locked)

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