You're preparing a recommendation for a senior leader on potential product categories for the next big TikTok Shop campaign. With two hours to the deadline, you discover that the market size data you built your entire case around is from two years ago and no longer accurate. What do you do?

Situation

In a university case competition, my team had prepared a go-to-market strategy for a Fintech client. Thirty minutes before our presentation, I cross-checked one of our key statistics and realized we had cited 2020 central bank data instead of the 2022 update, which showed a significantly different trend.

Task

I had to decide whether to present with the outdated data and risk credibility or quickly address the error without disrupting our flow.

Action

I immediately informed my team lead without panicking. We spent five minutes recalculating our core argument using the updated data, which actually made our recommendation stronger. I volunteered to verbally correct the error at the start of our presentation, explaining the mistake transparently to the judges and reframing our insights around the new numbers. We also flagged a note on the slide itself to show integrity. After the presentation, we shared the corrected data sheet with the judges.

Result

The judges commended our honesty and adaptability. We placed second overall, and one judge later told us the way we handled the error demonstrated more maturity than the original analysis.