Because of the vagaries of initiative and a desire to minimize bookkeeping, I look for the simplest and fairest solution. I would have to take a look at specific battlefield hazards to answer a specific hazard, but I generally handle them as follows. I have things do damage immediately if they do damage once, such as spikes. Things that do ongoing damage fall into three categories: those that do damage at the start of the creature's turn or on movement in to the effect, those that do damage at the end of the creature's turn, and those that do damage on their own initiative. Things that do damage on their own initiative or the end of the creatures turn also do damage immediately. The target creature has a chance to alter its situation before it takes damage again. Things that do damage on moving in or at the start of the creature's turn do not do damage immediately. The idea is for the effect to do damage once before the target creature has a chance to influence whether it takes damage again.
These spells function as the hazards that do damage on moving into the effect or at the start of the creatures turn. Aside from solutions provided by you and @evilbob to restrict damage to once a round, I want something simple that keeps the abuses out of the realm of possibility and my keeping track of stuff at a minimum. Our initiative process is that a player takes everyone's initiative rolls and writes them on magnetic cards on a magnetic white board, arranging them in order and keeping spaces open between players. I typically will roll one initiative per bad guy up to about 6 dice so that the bad guys are spread out a bit and don't all fight on one initiative, gang up, and clobber someone. What that means though is that the following situation comes up:
19: Player
18: Monster
17: Player
16: Monster
15: Player
14: Monster, Monster
13: Player
and so on.
As Jeremy interpreted the rules, if player 15 casts spirit guardians and catches the monsters on 14, they take damage. 15's turn ends and the monsters on 14 immediately take more damage before they can do anything. So your solution about restricting damage to once a round works until the next round where instead of all the monsters taking damage on the cleric's turn, it is on the monster's turn and there is an extended gap as we wait until each monster's initiative comes up. The next round the cleric moves and one monster is dropped from the aura and another one is picked up. So the new one takes damage immediately, but the others still in the aura wait until their turn to take damage. This turns into a bit of a headache as we play "which guys were already in the aura?"
Compare that to, "Okay it is this monster's turn. He is in your aura. So roll your damage, and I will roll the saving throw. Next it..." The same scenario would unfold if a creature walked into the aura.
Now Jeremy's solution is simple as well. It basically amounts to: "any interaction with the aura causes damage." This runs into the multiple damage scenarios mentioned before.
So how does this affect actual play? There is the risk of little to no damage being done by a 3rd level spell. The cleric could be attacked and fail its concentration saving throw. A monster in the aura that already took damage could pull another out of the aura before its turn. The cleric could get moved by a shove or telekinesis and the aura is removed from the monsters before their turn. Someone can use dispel magic. Bummer. This is not really that different from other 3rd level spells. Even a fireball can do no damage if the monk and rogue caught in the blast have evasion, counterspell is used, or little damage if the group is covered by an Ancients Paladin and make their saving throws.
Fluff-wise I look at this in terms of the 6 second round. The spirit guardians, while their aim is true and always get their target, take a second or two to get there to wallop the target on the head. Lots is going on simultaneously or near simultaneously. If something happened to keep the damage from happening to a monster it happened within those 6 seconds and possibly almost instantaneously. This makes it function similarly to Alchemist's Fire, which is essentially a bottle of napalm and can do no damage if another creature puts out the flames before the target creature's turn comes up.
Even with this narrow interpretation of the wording of the spell, spirit guardians has been one of the most awesome, reliable spells at the table. It was especially formidable when the cleric cast it at a higher level. Suddenly the damage starts picking up and that plus the rest of the party's damage makes combat end very quickly.
There is one case I can think of where I would go for damage being done twice a round. If a creature with a Move legendary action or some other means of doing movement outside of its turn uses that movement to enter the effect, it takes damage then and at the start of its turn, even if that is turn comes up next.
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