This question decides more senior processes than anyone admits — not because interviewers are looking for a scandal, but because the answer reveals how you handle difficulty, which is most of what they are assessing.
Three things: whether you are honest, whether you carry resentment, and whether the same thing is likely to happen again. None of those is about the circumstances of your departure. All of them are about how you describe it.
Two or three sentences. A long answer signals that there is a lot to explain, whatever the words say.
Not the whole truth, but nothing that is not true. Anything invented will meet someone who was there.
Finish on what you want next, not on what went wrong. It moves the conversation where you want it.
Consistency across interviewers, references and coffees is what makes it credible.
The interviewer is not deciding whether the departure was your fault. They are deciding whether you are still angry about it.
Criticism of named individuals, however deserved. Detailed accounts of internal politics. Anything that requires the listener to take your side against people they cannot hear from. Each one converts a routine question into the most memorable part of the interview, for the wrong reason.
A good answer does not erase a difficult exit. What it does is stop the exit being the thing they remember, which is all it needs to do.
What you do in the fortnight after leaving a senior role matters more than it should, because it is when the story that follows you gets set.
Read → The senior interviewSenior interviews are decided on judgement, not answers. Preparing for them is therefore a different exercise from preparing for any interview you have had before.
Read → Pay and the offerAt senior level, references are rarely the three names you supplied. Knowing how they are really gathered changes what you should do about them.
Read →A short call, your target list, and an honest answer about whether this fits how you are running your search.