Frame technical debt in business terms leadership understands: "Our deployment takes 3 hours, costing 15 engineering hours per week. Two sprints of investment saves 700 hours per year."
Strong answers show partnership with engineering: understanding the business impact of tech debt (velocity loss, incident frequency, recruitment challenges), allocating a sustainable percentage of capacity, framing debt reduction in business terms, and tracking improvement over time. Best candidates avoid treating tech debt as an engineering-only concern.
Tests engineering partnership. PMs who ignore tech debt lose engineering trust. Those who can quantify its business impact and advocate for investment earn deep credibility with their teams.