Free resource
Twelve realistic board questions below, two behavioural and two forward facing at each rank, covering every CVF competency and value between them. The full bank of 130+ questions across every CVF area is a free download, and there is a Met future-focused section further down.
Download the full bank free →Sergeant board
Describe a situation where you noticed one of your officers was not coping after a traumatic job, even though they insisted they were fine. What did you pick up on and what did you do?
Describe a situation where you challenged the inappropriate behaviour or language of one of your own team, knowing it would be uncomfortable.
You take over as supervisor of a team and quickly find that several outstanding actions on serious crime files have drifted past their deadlines under the previous supervisor. How would you take ownership of the backlog?
One of your most capable officers has become withdrawn and cynical, doing the minimum and influencing the newer members of the team. How would you re engage them?
A taste of the 45 Sergeant questions in the bank. Download the rest free, or see how to prepare for the sergeant promotion board.
Inspector board
Describe a situation where you had to allocate limited resources across competing demands from several of your teams, and the prioritising you did left someone disappointed. How did you carry your sergeants with you?
Describe a situation where a sergeant strongly disagreed with a resourcing decision in front of other supervisors, and you had to ensure their view was properly heard.
You notice that one of your teams is generating far more recorded outcomes than the others for similar work, and the numbers look too good. How would you get to the truth of what is actually happening before drawing any conclusions?
Your resourcing plan for the week is agreed, but overnight demand data shows a very different picture emerging. How would you decide whether to change course?
A taste of the 45 Inspector questions in the bank. Download the rest free, or see how to prepare for the inspector promotion board.
Chief Inspector board
Describe a situation where you recognised a partner agency was better placed than your command to lead on a critical outcome, and you had to manage internal resistance to step your own organisation back.
Describe a situation where you had to be honest with a community or partner about the limits of what policing could deliver for them, knowing the message would be unwelcome.
A peer network shows that three comparable forces have adopted an innovation that is measurably improving performance, and your force has no equivalent. How would you close that gap?
A review flags a force wide gap in the supervision of high risk missing person investigations spanning several departments. Ownership is contested at command level. How would you build the case for structural change?
A taste of the 45 Chief Inspector questions in the bank. Download the rest free, or see how to prepare for the chief inspector promotion board.
Metropolitan Police
The Met no longer runs a CVF-scored interview. Its promotion interview is future-focused and marked 1 to 4 on your potential to perform at the next rank, against the Met’s own Success Profile areas. That means the questions ask how you would lead, not what you once did.
Your team's stop and search figures look strong, but a colleague hints that some grounds are being written to fit. As a new sergeant, what do you do first?
Confidence in your neighbourhood teams is falling fastest among residents who never contact police at all. As an Inspector, how would you reach the people you never hear from?
Future focused interview questions ask what you would do, not what you once did. There is no past example to lean on: the panel sets a situation in the rank you are applying for and listens for how you would think it through, so the marks come from your reasoning, your judgement and the way you weigh competing pressures. A polished war story scores poorly here because it shows history, not potential. The samples above are built exactly this way, and the full pattern is broken down in the future-focused interview guide.
State6 has a full Met mode: a question generator built on the Met’s model, answers marked 1 to 4 on potential, and a voiced Met mock board. Start with the Met promotion guide.
The full bank
The twelve above are the taster. The full bank covers all six competencies and all three values at Sergeant, Inspector and Chief Inspector, behavioural and forward facing, as a free PDF.
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Every question on this page as a clean printable workbook, with the STARR and PEEL structures alongside so you can plan your answers offline.
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How to use the questions
These ask for a real past example (“tell me about a time…”). Answer them with STARR: situation, task, action, result, reflection.
These ask how you would handle a situation. Answer them with PEEL: position, evidence, explore the tension, lead.
Reading questions is the easy part. The hard part is delivering a strong answer out loud, under pressure. When you are ready, sit the voiced AI mock board or get a written answer scored the way your force marks.
How boards score
In the standard national process, every promotion board question maps to one or more areas of the Competency and Values Framework, and the panel scores your answer against the behaviours expected at the rank you are going for, not the rank you hold. That is why an excellent constable answer fails a sergeant board and an excellent sergeant answer fails an inspector board. Assessors listen for the positive indicators and watch for the negative ones, marking to an agreed scale so that candidates can be compared fairly.
Three things move a score more than anything else. The panel needs to hear your individual actions rather than the team’s, so collective language costs marks. The evidence needs to sit at the right rank, which assessors call rank calibration. And the outcome needs to be specific: what changed and what you learned from it. A confident story that never lands a measurable result scores lower than candidates expect.
The Met is the exception. Its promotion interview is future focused and marked 1 to 4 on potential against the Met’s own model, which is why the Met section of this page looks different. The Met promotion guide covers that process in full. For the full picture of the process at every rank, see the complete guide to police promotion board preparation.
Reading is not practising
A bank tells you what you will be asked. It cannot tell you whether your answer lands. That is what State6 does.
A chair asks questions at your rank out loud, probes your answer and marks it the way your force marks, with a full written debrief.
Build a STARR or PEEL answer and have it marked at your rank, against the CVF 2024 or the Met's own model, so you see exactly where the marks are won and lost. It even tells you when you have reached for the wrong story or angle for the question, with a verdict of strong, workable or wrong.
Targeted AI coaching that takes an answer from competent to compelling, the difference between a pass and a near miss.
Try it free first. Build your first answer with no card, then upgrade if it helps.
Five mock boards and every tool on the platform. Pay once for 90 days, no subscription. Or see the mock board first.
FAQ
Boards mix two types. Behavioural questions ask for a real example from your own service, and forward facing questions ask how you would handle a situation. Both are scored against the CVF at the rank you are going for. The samples on this page show you two of each at every rank, and the free download covers every CVF area in depth.
Yes. The twelve samples on this page are free to read, and the full bank of 130+ questions arrives as a PDF when you leave your email. The bank itself is a sample of the library inside State6, which generates up to 450 practice questions on Gold, pitched at your rank and your force.
Yes. The bank is split into Sergeant, Inspector and Chief Inspector, and each question is pitched at the level that board expects. A sergeant question centres on leading a team, while an inspector or chief inspector question moves up to managing across teams and carrying organisational risk.
Future focused interview questions ask how you would handle a situation in the rank you are applying for, rather than asking for a past example. The Metropolitan Police built its 2026 promotion interview entirely around them, scored 1 to 4 on potential. The Met section on this page shows real samples of the format.
Yes. The Met assesses promotion differently: a future-focused interview scored 1 to 4 on potential rather than past examples scored against the CVF. The Met section on this page shows what those questions look like, and State6 has a full Met mode that generates them for your rank.
Use STARR for behavioural questions and PEEL for forward facing ones. STARR runs through situation, task, action, result and reflection. PEEL sets a position, backs it with evidence, explores the tension and lands on a clear lead. The how to use section above links to a full guide for each.
No. Nobody can give you the exact questions your panel will ask. These are realistic practice questions built around the same CVF areas your board draws from, so the practice still transfers even though the wording on the day will differ.
Stop reading, start answering
Sit a voiced AI mock board, or build an answer and have it scored at your rank, the way your force marks. That is the part the questions can not teach you.
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