I remember in one job the company had a set of questions we had to ask candidates on top of the technical questions. One of them was “what would you describe as your biggest weakness?”

I always grown when I have to ask that question because you always get some stupid answers where people say things like “I’m just too organised” or similar spin to make a negative sound like a positive. Frankly I can’t blame them because it’s a ridiculous question to ask.

However this one candidate not only listed off one flaw but three of them. I remember thinking “shut up, shut up, shut up. You’re not supposed to answer this honestly!”

However this ironically turned out to be the reason I hired him. I figured if he is that honest and able to identify his flaws then he must have a good work ethic.

He turned out to be one of my best ever junior hires.

I tend to coach the question to prevent people from giving it a softball, with something like "I have certainly caused my fair share of crisis, what I'm interested in is the experiences you ..."

It's an adequate test to filter out folks who are simply incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions, or who have yet to really shoulder enough responsibility to meaningfully fail.