When asked why you left a job, is it OK to talk about problems with the past wor...

I'm preparing for an interview with a new company. In general, I like doing work that I think is important and that my colleagues and management take seriously. Some of my jobs in the past were not a good fit because this wasn't the culture. For example one manager preferred people called in sick instead of planning an absence because it looks better on paper that they didn't choose to take work time off, or something like that. This new job I think has more of a serious work culture. If they ask me why I left past jobs, is there a good way to include this in my response? I also think this new job takes data security seriously, which I like. Is it OK to say in an interview that I'm looking for an environment where we take client (or even the public's) security seriously?

I know the going advice is to say "I'm looking to grow" if asked why your leaving your current position. Is there a way I could phrase it so it shows that I care about their corporate values or work culture? Why is it bad to say "I'm looking for a new job because I want to work in a place that takes protecting client data seriously", especially if the new job claims this is a value of theirs? In general I've struggled with the inter-personal skills (or at least non-technical) side of interviews.

It depends what you mean by "problems".

If you had personal problems with someone. No, don't mention it. The interviewer cannot possibly see who is "right" there, so best case they flag you as a risk. Worst case they dismiss you outright. Nobody needs personal problems at a workplace.

If you had professional problems, yes, please mention it. As an interviewer, nothing says "had personal problems but got told not to speak about it" more than those generic nothing-burgers like "I want to grow" or "looking for new opportunities".

Give me a real reason why you want to leave your current job. For example, mine wanted to switch to SAP (which is unnesessarily complex configuration management) while I wanted to continue to develop software. So I was looking for a new job. Or maybe you saw that there were layoffs and while it has not been you, you don't feel confident at a company that had to part with parts of their workforce. Or maybe they have a salary table that pays by things unrelated to your performance and you want to be paid by what you actually do, instead of what you are.

The interviewer knows fully well that you are not "wanting to grow" or "looking for new opportunities". You can give them something solid, or you can leave them hanging with a nagging feeling that you didn't want to talk about what happened at your last job.

Pick an actual, real reason you want to leave.

Run it by a friend to make sure you find a constructive message (for example: "SAP sucks, the bosses who want that are all stupid idiots" is not it. "I really enjoy developing individual software tailored to the business needs, not configuring external software, that is a different job" sounds better).