Root Cause - Characteristics of A Root Cause

Characteristics of A Root Cause

One of the difficulties encountered in root cause analysis is knowing when you have found a bona fide root cause. A checklist of the characteristics of a root cause can help the analyst separate pseudo root causes from real ones.

A 2010 paper on Change Resistance as the Crux of the Environmental Sustainability Problem used root cause analysis to find two main root causes of the sustainability problem. The paper presented three characteristics of a root cause:

"A root cause is a portion of a system’s structure that 'best' helps to explain why the system’s behavior produces a problem’s symptoms. Difficult problems usually have multiple root causes. These are found by asking a succession of 'Why is this happening?' Kaizen-like questions until the root causes are found.

"How do you know when to stop? A root cause has three identifying characteristics (compare to Rooney and Heuvel, 2004, who list 4 characteristics):

"1. It is clearly a (or the) major cause of the symptoms.

"2. It has no worthwhile deeper cause. This allows you to stop asking why at some appropriate point in root cause analysis. Otherwise you may find your-self digging to the other side of the planet.

"3. It can be resolved. Sometimes it’s useful to emphasize unchangeable root causes in your model for greater understanding and to avoid trying to resolve them without realizing it. These have only the first two characteristics.

"This definition allows numerous unproductive or pseudo root causes to be quickly eliminated.

"The important thing is to not stop at intermediate causes. These are plausible and easily found. Working on resolving what are in fact intermediate causes looks productive and feels productive. Intermediate cause solutions, more accurately called symptomatic solutions, may even work for awhile. But until the true root causes are resolved, powerful social agents will invariably find a way to delay, circumvent, block, weaken, or even rollback these solutions, because intermediate causes are symptoms of deeper causes. One must strike at the root."

While the paper dealt with a social problem, the three characteristics apply to problems of any kind.