について and 形になってしまった。

So the sentence in question is:

先月私達が係わっていたＸＹＺプロジェクトについて今日社長から質問を受け、その答えを用意していなかったので正に不意をつかれた形になってしまった。

1. What is the precise effect について has on this sentence. I am guessing this implies that the boss is asking a question about the project.
2. I can't quite figure out what 形になってしまった。means. My best guess is to become tense?
So I am thinking:

'I was flustered and caught off guard because I was unprepared for the question my boss asked me (or, 'unprepared to answer the question I received from my boss') about the XYZ project we were concerned with from last month.'

accidental post, keep pressing quote instead of edit >_>

1. Indeed, について means "on the topic of", "about". Not to be confused with ついに (finally) and つい (just now).
2. Literally translating 形 yields "shape, appearance", which makes things rather awkward in English if you translate word by word: "it came to a shape that's taken by surprise". For a natural translation you can just leave it out: "we were (naturally) taken by surprise".

Thanks for that

Does indeed sound strange when trying to translate it literally.