Ask why first, because the reason changes the play. If your contact fears looking out of control, offer to prep them and attend as support rather than replace them. If they doubt the deal is worth their boss's time, the business case is not strong enough yet. If they simply cannot get the meeting, that is a signal about their influence, and you need a second thread into the account.
Why interviewers ask this
Going around a contact is how reps blow up deals, and never going around one is how deals die in the middle of the org. The interviewer wants to see judgment on that line: how you earn access rather than force it, and how you keep your contact's trust while doing it. They also want to hear you can read blocked access as qualification data, not just an obstacle.
How to structure your answer
- Diagnose the reason for the block before choosing a tactic.
- Offer a trade: something the buyer needs that your contact cannot produce alone.
- Position your contact as the leader of the meeting, not a bystander.
- Build a parallel thread if access stays blocked, and be transparent about it.
Example answer
I ask directly and without drama: what would need to be true for your CFO to give us twenty minutes. Usually one of three things comes back. Sometimes they are protecting their turf, in which case I make it clear they run the meeting, I am there to answer questions, and I will send them the deck first so nothing surprises them. Sometimes they are not confident the case is strong enough to spend their boss's attention on, which is really feedback on my work, so we build the numbers together until they would happily defend it. And sometimes they just cannot get the meeting, which tells me my contact is not as central as I thought. In that case I go wide rather than up. I had a deal where the manager could not get us in, so I got introduced to a director in an adjacent team through a customer who had worked with him, and I told my original contact I was doing it before I did it. He was relieved, honestly. The worst version is going around someone silently and having it get back to them.
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See how it worksFollow-up questions to expect
- How do you go around a contact without burning them?
- What do you send ahead of a CFO meeting?
- How do you know when blocked access means you should disqualify?
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