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What does Root Cause Analysis entail?
Home » Management » Root Cause Analysis » What does Root Cause Analysis entail?When problems hit, there’s usually an air of immediacy, which means people want to address the issue, not the cause. This is akin to treating the symptom instead of finding the underlying cause, just to make the patient more comfortable. Once the symptom is under control, people forget to take time to figure out why the problem happened in the first place. But Root Cause Analysis, which, admittedly, takes time, is a key factor in keeping symptoms at bay in the future.
A Root Cause Analysis can be performed many different ways, but it always comes down to asking why something occurred. Start with the problem, asking what prompted the problem to happen in the first place. Then keep taking it further and further, until you can pinpoint a specific process, policy, or procedure that isn’t working to prevent such problems. Of course, at times problems occur simply because of a personnel error, but research has shown that the vast majority of the time, it’s a process that failed, not a person.
No matter which method you use, which company you hire, or which consultant you speak with, it all comes down to asking why until you see a pattern in the problem. Don’t stop asking, probing each and ever process or policy, until it’s obvious what caused the problem.
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