CSM Scrum Master Core Competencies Practice Question
A Scrum Master joins a team that has been using Scrum for a year. The team's Sprint Retrospectives have become a recurring complaint session about a single difficult stakeholder, and no improvement actions are ever produced. The Scrum Master wants to help the team get more value from the event. Which action best reflects the Scrum Master's accountability?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is treating a stalled Retrospective as a facilitation problem to be solved by the Scrum Master directing tasks, rather than a coaching opportunity to restore the team's ownership of its own improvement.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Coach the team on the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective, help them focus on inspect-and-adapt of their own process, and let them choose improvement actions they own.
The Sprint Retrospective is where the Scrum Team inspects itself and creates a plan for improvements it owns. When the event produces complaints but no action, the Scrum Master's accountability for the team's effectiveness calls for coaching on the event's purpose and helping the team take ownership of concrete improvements, not for taking over or replacing the event.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Escalate the difficult stakeholder to management and ask that the Retrospective be paused until the stakeholder issue is resolved.
Why it's wrong here
Escalation may sometimes be warranted, but pausing the Retrospective removes the team's only structured opportunity to inspect and adapt its way of working. The event's value does not depend on the stakeholder issue being resolved first. The Scrum Master's role is to help the team improve how it works, not to suspend the event until external conditions change.
- ✗
Replace the Retrospective with a survey so Developers can submit anonymous feedback and the Scrum Master can summarize the results for management.
Why it's wrong here
A survey is not the Sprint Retrospective and does not create a team-owned improvement plan. Converting the event into data collection for management shifts its purpose from team self-inspection to reporting upward, which undermines transparency and self-management. The Retrospective is a formal Scrum event with a defined purpose that the Scrum Master should protect.
- ✗
Take over facilitation of the Retrospective and personally assign improvement tasks to each Developer to ensure follow-through.
Why it's wrong here
Assigning tasks removes the team's ownership of its own improvement and turns the Scrum Master into a manager. The Retrospective is an opportunity for the team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements; the Scrum Master facilitates and coaches rather than directing work. This approach would likely increase dependency and suppress the self-management Scrum is meant to build.
- ✓
Coach the team on the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective, help them focus on inspect-and-adapt of their own process, and let them choose improvement actions they own.
Why this is correct
The Scrum Master serves the Scrum Team by coaching on self-management and helping it focus on creating high-value increments. A Retrospective that produces no owned improvements signals a facilitation and coaching gap, so helping the team reconnect to the event's purpose and own its actions directly addresses the Scrum Master's accountability for the team's effectiveness.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Scrum Alliance exam blueprint
This CSM practice question is part of Courseiva's free Scrum Alliance certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CSM exam.