Situational Judgment and Interpersonal Skills
What the test measures
These items present a realistic workplace scenario and ask what you should do. They assess judgment, integrity, respect for chain of command, de-escalation, confidentiality, fairness, and teamwork. There is usually one best answer and several that are defensible but wrong for a specific reason - too aggressive, too passive, out of order, or outside your authority.
Traps that show up
- Right action, wrong order. A good step taken before securing safety or notifying a supervisor is the wrong answer.
- Doing nothing. "Wait and see" or "it's not my concern" options are almost always wrong.
- Bypassing the chain of command. Going over a supervisor without justification is penalized.
- Overreaction. Escalating a minor matter, or confronting a colleague publicly, loses to a private, procedural response.
- Ignoring documentation. Reports and referrals matter; an answer that resolves the issue but never records it is incomplete.
Rule of thumb
Sort candidate answers by this order: safety first, then policy and chain of command, then communication and de-escalation, then documentation. The best answer usually satisfies several of these in sequence.
Worked example
You see a fellow officer pocket a small item from a scene. The best response is not to say nothing and not to announce it in front of others, but to address it privately and report it through the proper channel, documenting what you observed.