5 Whys or 5 Assumptions?

5 Whys is now part of almost every problem solver’s vocabulary. Having worked on and seen many thousands of root cause analyses, I find them in 8D, A3 and all their variants.

The original idea is sound: you can get to the bottom of most things by asking why 5 times, and often with just one or two.

But… ONLY... if the Whys are valid…

The example above shows one of the difficulties with asking colleagues “Why?”. When there’s been a problem, people will feel unhappy with not knowing why, and this leads to the kind of conversation above, where some of the answers may be assumptions rather than confirmed facts.

One way around this is to always require the evidence behind the stated cause, as in this technology example:

“Why?” is a tempting question, and is usually best deferred until after you’ve understood what the problem is. A more useful starting point is:

What happened?

What information has our investigation turned up?

After those questions, do use 5 Whys, and make sure each causal link has definitive supporting evidence.

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