Techniques - Root Cause Analysis - 2. The Five Whys (Element)

This may take more or less than

Five questions

Step 1 - The Five Whys Technique

Write the problem on a flip chart or whiteboard

Continue with step 3 until you are convinced the

actual root cause has been identified

The five whys approach repeatedly asks questions in an

attempt to get to the root cause of the problem

Once all ideas are captured in the diagram, use the five whys approach to

drill down to the root causes

The five whys can be used alone or as part of the

fishbone diagram technique

This is one of the simplest facilitation tools to use when problems have a

human interaction component

The technique is called the five whys because

it often takes that many to reach the root cause, not because the question must be asked five times

Step 2 - The Five Whys Technique

o Ask "Why do you think this problem occurs?" and o capture the idea below the problem

Step 3 - The Five Whys Technique

o Ask "Why?" again and o capture that idea below the first idea

The five whys is a

question asking process to explore the nature and cause of a problem