Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

158 Root Cause

The key initiating cause in a sequence of events that leads to an event of interest.

The human tendency is to presume that problems have single causes, but most problems, especially difficult problems, have multiple causes. A proximal cause is the effect that happens right after a singular cause. Proximal causes are strung together into a cause-event sequence; the root cause is the key event in this sequence that leads to a problem. When solving a problem, it is important to understand the problem deeply and ask the right questions to make sure you are actually fixing the problem by addressing the root cause.1

Root cause analysis is a way of understanding problems in terms of their causes, with the goal of finding the first event ...