CSM Scrum Events Practice Question
During a Sprint Retrospective, the team identifies a major impediment involving company-wide HR policies that restrict cross-functional collaboration. The team feels helpless to change it. What should the Scrum Master do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often choose passive answers like telling the team to just accept organizational rules, or incorrectly expect developers to resolve macro-level company policies themselves.
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
✓
Take ownership of the impediment and collaborate with organizational leaders to drive systemic change.
The Scrum Master serves as a servant-leader who helps remove impediments that lie outside the team immediate sphere of influence. When systemic organizational roadblocks prevent agility, the Scrum Master must engage with broader leadership and HR to advocate for structural changes. Empowering the team means taking ownership of these macro impediments while coaching the organization toward agile maturity and removing systemic waste.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Tell the team to ignore the HR policies and work around them without seeking management support.
Why it's wrong here
Covertly circumventing HR policy exposes the team to disciplinary risk and hides the impediment rather than resolving it. It appeals because teams want to keep delivering, but a Scrum Master must surface organisational blockers to management, not authorise policy breaches.
- ✓
Take ownership of the impediment and collaborate with organizational leaders to drive systemic change.
Why this is correct
Escalate the impediment beyond the team's authority by engaging organisational leadership, since HR policy sits outside the Scrum Team's control. The Scrum Master owns removing impediments, and systemic, company-wide constraints require influencing decision-makers rather than expecting the team to resolve what they cannot change.
- ✗
Remove the impediment from the Retrospective action items because it falls outside the Scrum Team control.
Why it's wrong here
Dismissing the impediment abandons the Scrum Master's duty to escalate organisational blockers the team cannot resolve alone. It is tempting because Retrospective actions should stay within the team's sphere, yet company-wide HR policy is precisely the systemic obstacle a Scrum Master raises with management.
- ✗
Instruct the Product Owner to rewrite the Product Backlog items to avoid cross-functional dependencies.
Why it's wrong here
Rewriting backlog items hides the dependency instead of removing the HR policy blocking collaboration, and it is the Product Owner's backlog to order, not the Scrum Master's to dictate. Escalating the impediment to leadership is the Scrum Master's actual duty; backlog reshaping is tempting because it appears to unblock delivery.
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.