Decision Making & Problem Solving — Practice

Question 1

Approximately how many questions does Decision Making contribute to CSAT Paper II?

Accepted Answer

A

Question 2

You are a junior officer. A senior colleague you respect and who has always mentored you well asks you to approve an expense claim that is missing two supporting bills, assuring you the bills exist and will follow within the week. Refusing risks visibly straining a relationship you value; approving risks a process the audit team could later flag. You should

Accepted Answer

B

Question 3

A team member who has never been late in three years has now arrived late on four occasions over two weeks, offering no explanation and seeming visibly withdrawn. Two colleagues have started grumbling that 'rules should apply to everyone.' As their supervisor, you should

Accepted Answer

A

Question 4

An elderly applicant at your counter has lost the original certificate a scheme requires, in a flood that damaged their home three weeks ago. They have a certified photocopy and a police loss report. You are a frontline clerk; your office's supervisor with discretionary authority over such exceptions is on leave for two more days, and the applicant says they've already made two long, difficult trips to reach this office. You should

Accepted Answer

C

Question 5

During a routine walk-through, you notice a frayed safety cable on a rarely-used section of scaffolding. It hasn't failed and isn't due for use again for about a week, but replacing it now would pull two workers off a task that's already behind a hard external deadline. You should

Accepted Answer

D

Question 6

Your section head verbally instructs you to release a set of files to a visiting official today, 'as a courtesy, no need to log it formally.' Your department's written protocol requires all file releases to external visitors to be logged and counter-signed, with no stated exceptions. You have no reason to suspect wrongdoing — this may simply be an oversight on your section head's part. You should

Accepted Answer

C

Question 7

A visibly exhausted visitor tells you they've been sent between three departments today for what should be a routine document request, and that no one has actually looked at what they need — each desk simply redirected them based on the form's title. You realise their actual request does belong at a fourth desk you know well. You should

Accepted Answer

B

Question 8

You find that a colleague has been marking routine equipment inspections as 'completed' on days you know they were on leave. Nothing so far indicates any equipment has actually failed or that anyone was endangered. Your colleague is well-liked, and this may be a shortcut born of a heavy workload rather than anything more serious. You should:
(a) Speak to the colleague privately first, giving them a chance to explain or correct it, before deciding whether anything further is needed
(b) Report it through the proper internal channel straightaway, without raising it with the colleague first
(c) Let it go, since nothing has actually gone wrong and raising it could unfairly damage a well-regarded colleague's standing
(d) Mention it informally to a few trusted colleagues to get a sense of whether this is a wider pattern before deciding what to do

Accepted Answer

This one genuinely divides opinion, and both (a) and (b) have a real case behind them. The strongest argument for (b) is that safety-record falsification is a serious integrity matter regardless of intent, and letting one employee's personal judgment decide who deserves a private word first is exactly the kind of informal, inconsistent handling proper reporting channels exist to avoid. The case for (a) is that going straight to a formal report, with everything that then follows from it, for what might turn out to be a workload-driven shortcut, without ever asking the person directly, risks treating a conversation-sized problem as a disciplinary one from the outset. On balance, (a) is the better first step specifically because nothing here yet indicates deception for personal gain or any actual harm, and a direct, respectful conversation preserves the option to escalate immediately if the explanation doesn't hold up — it doesn't foreclose (b), it simply orders the steps sensibly. (c) is wrong regardless of which view you take, because 'nothing has gone wrong yet' is not evidence that the records are reliable, only that no one has been unlucky. (d) is the clearest error of the four: informal soundings among colleagues risk turning a records issue into office rumour before either the colleague or the proper channel has had any say in it.

Question 9

You hold a small discretionary repair fund. Two requests arrive on the same day: one team's ageing equipment has started causing minor delays and could fail within a month; another team lost equipment to accidental damage yesterday and is fully stalled right now. The fund covers only one repair this quarter. You should

Accepted Answer

D

Question 10

You are the senior-most official on site when a sudden landslide blocks the only access road to a village during heavy rain, with more rain forecast. Hiring emergency earthmoving equipment right now would cost more than your own sanction limit allows, and your reporting officer is unreachable by phone for the next several hours because of the same weather. Waiting for approval risks the road staying blocked through the worst of the storm. You should

Accepted Answer

B

Question 11

A scholarship's application deadline is fixed by policy. An otherwise-fully-eligible student submits one day late, with a hospital discharge summary showing they were admitted for an emergency on the deadline date itself. The scheme's guidelines give the reviewing officer discretion to admit 'exceptional, documented' late submissions, but the officer has never actually used this discretion before and is unsure how it will look in an audit. The officer should

Accepted Answer

C

Question 12

Your section head asks you, as a personal favour, to move their nephew's routine application to the top of a first-come-first-served processing queue, framing it as 'nothing that affects anyone badly, everyone's request gets handled eventually anyway.' You should

Accepted Answer

B

Question 13

A journalist calls asking you to confirm or deny a rumour about an internal irregularity currently under review in your department, which you have partial, incomplete knowledge of. You are not the department's designated spokesperson. You should

Accepted Answer

C

Question 14

A team member privately tells you a colleague has been making comments that make them uncomfortable, but asks you not to take any formal action yet — they want to first see if simply raising it informally with the colleague resolves it, and are worried a formal complaint will change how the team treats them. As their supervisor, you should

Accepted Answer

C

Question 15

Given that Decision Making carries no negative marking and is officially qualifying rather than merit-ranked, but the underlying scenarios are often genuinely close calls with no textbook-fast answer, the sensible exam-day approach is to

Accepted Answer

A

Practice — Decision Making & Problem Solving

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