Are Right, A Lot: Amazon Interview Questions and Answers
Are Right, A Lot is the most misunderstood of Amazon's leadership principles. Amazon's wording: "Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs."
What does Are Right, A Lot actually mean?
It is not about being infallible, and answering as if you are never wrong is the fastest way to fail this principle. The principle is about judgment under uncertainty: making good calls with incomplete information, and, crucially, about how you handle the possibility of being wrong. The second sentence is the tell: strong leaders actively look for evidence against their own position before committing.
In practice, Amazon is testing whether you separate your ego from your ideas. People who are right a lot are usually the people who change their mind quickly when the data says so.
What interviewers look for
- A decision made with incomplete information, with a clear account of how you weighed what you knew and didn't know.
- Disconfirmation habits. You asked the person most likely to disagree, ran the cheap experiment, or looked for the data that would kill your idea.
- A genuine "I was wrong" story where you updated fast and the outcome improved because of it.
Are Right, A Lot interview questions
- Tell me about a decision you made with incomplete information. How did you decide?
- Describe a time you were convinced you were right and turned out to be wrong.
- How do you seek out perspectives that challenge your own? Give a real example.
- Tell me about a time you changed your mind because of data or a colleague's argument.
- Describe your most difficult judgment call of the last year.
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with the data. What did you do?
- When did you make a high-impact decision quickly? Would you make it again?
How to answer
Bring one story where your judgment was good and one where it wasn't, and treat them with equal respect. For the good call, show your process: options, what you knew, what you deliberately checked before committing. For the miss, skip the excuses; what matters is how quickly you noticed, what you did about it, and what your decision process looks like now. STAR structure keeps both tight.
Every principle interviews better with a prepared example: our story bank guide shows how to build one, and the Amazon Leadership Principles guide covers the rest of the list. Want practice against someone who has run these loops? Get matched with a coach.