The Five Whys

How to use it. Use it as a prompt to slow down in incident reviews. Each "why" should challenge the answer to the previous one. Stop when the answer becomes a system property rather than an action.

How it gets misused. Treated as a root cause method. There is rarely one root cause. Complex incidents have networks of contributing factors. Five Whys produces a single narrative thread. That helps to prompt thought, and misleads when treated as the complete picture. Read it alongside The New View.