It's difficult to evaluate without knowing what your initial answer was. So I don't know why the interviewer is pressing on this topic. I see a few possibilities:

1. She doesn't think you achieved the desired result (i.e., it was not a good example, or there was poor communication)
2. She is probing for your learning abilities / ability to process feedback (which is odd if it was a success)

My general recommendation here is that when you get a question you don't understand why it is being asked, you should ask them WHY they are asking the question.

For example: “I believe we achieved the intended result, so it is not clear to me why I would take a different approach in this specific instance. Can you clarify why do you think that would be necessary?”

This will give you clarity on what they are looking for, and therefore you answer afterwards should be able to focus on what really matters to the interviewer at that point.

(editiert)

Hi there,

This is essentially them asking “what did you learn?”

In this case, it sounds like they think you didn't solve the problem optimally. There might be 1 or 2 other things you should have done?

Could you have flagged it to your boss? Said something slightly different to the person? Done something afterwards? Prevented the situation altogether by addressing the issue before it become one?

Think about “how you would do it differently”…literally as they've asked :)

Hi!

Try to look at it from a different angle: What have you learned?

Then describe how the lessons learnt would change your performance in future projects.

Best,

Anto

…

There could be many reasons why the interviewer is asking you this questions - and thinking along those dimensions can help you answer it:

• Lateral thinking: Can you come up with a more creative way to do what you did?
• Pragmatic thinking: Can you do things more pragmatically than what you did and achieve the same result but with a higher consistency? (opposite of creative)
• Regrets: The interviewer wants to check if you had any regrets about the decisions you took and if you could have done it differently with lesser regrets
• Individual aspects: Could you have done some mini-aspects of the achievement differently? Communication, leadership, mentorship, guidance, team-work? anything? Maybe giving an idea along these dimensions can help you highlight your qualities to the interviewer.

You might even want to ask the interviewer what they mean by ‘different’. Maybe they tell you something along any of the above 4 bullets. Then you have it!

There is another similar question: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/i-find-it-hard-to-answer-how-would-you-do-it-differently-11808