Frequent Incident Investigation & Root Cause Analysis Problems

Incident Investigation/Root Cause Analysis Problems

Have you ever seen people have any of these root cause analysis and incident investigation problems at your company? For example, people:

• Call human error a root cause.
• Focus on blame. (It was a stupid decision, or they should have known better.)
• Start looking for why the incident happened before they know what happened.
• Avoid topics because they are “off limits.”
• Create a cover story to avoid blame.
• Jump to conclusions
• Look for evidence that proves what they think caused the accident.
• Can’t decide who is telling the truth. (Disagreement between witnesses.)
• Consider the incident to be a “freak accident” and not worthy of investigation.
• Don’t look for similar incidents from the past and consider why previous corrective actions didn’t prevent recurrence.
• Make assumptions and start believing they are facts without proof.
• In an interview, don’t let people tell their story and, instead, bombard them with questions.
• Have lawyers lead the investigation.
• Are given the investigation to do in their spare time.
• Have management tell them the results of the investigation before it starts, because “we already know what the causes are.”
• Pick root causes from an approved list.
• Use 5-Whys to find “the” root cause.
• Never had any root cause analysis training.
• Use the same old corrective actions that have always been approved before.
• Have favorite causes that they tend to look for.
• Leave things out of their report because they are too controversial.
• Are given an arbitrary, short deadline for an investigation.
• Assign too many people to an investigation team.
• Provide too few resources to perform an investigation.
• Have the wrong people on an investigation team.
• Assign the root cause analysis to the supervisor.
• Fail to ensure effective corrective actions are implemented.
• Focus on “the report” rather than what needs to be done to improve performance and mitigate risk.
• Fail to see unintended consequences in proposed corrective actions.
• Fail to share lessons learned with employees and other facilities.
• Fail to assign responsibility to implement corrective actions.

That’s quite a list. I don’t think I’ve seen any organization with all these problems. But I have seen all of these problems at least once in various organizations.

Most Frequent Problem

What do you think? What are the most common problems in general? At your facility?

Vote on the top five problems in general
by listing them in the comments below.

The top five I’ve seen (in no specific order) are:

• Focusing on blame.
• Use the same old corrective actions.
• Look for evidence that proves what they think caused the incident (confirmation bias).
• Never had any root cause analysis training.
• Using 5-Whys.

If your list of root cause analysis and incident investigation problems is too long, we can help you cut the list down.

Fixing The Problems

Of the 31 problems listed above, 16 are fixed when you implement the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System. And many more are fixed when you implement the incident investigation and root cause analysis policy recommended in our TapRooT® 10-book set.

To learn more about TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis and how it solves incident investigation and root cause analysis problems, attend a TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course. I would suggest the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Course.

CLICK HERE for more information about TapRooT® Training.

CLICK HERE for the dates and locations of our public TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Courses.

Finally, CLICK HERE for information about our TapRooT® RCA Software.

Improving Root Cause Analysis – Global TapRooT® Summit

There is another opportunity to learn how to improve your company’s root cause analysis and incident investigation. The 2027 Global TapRooT® Summit has a whole track devoted to improving your root cause analysis. The nine sessions in the Improving Root Cause Analysis Track, including:

• Root Cause Analysis Success Stories
• What Leaders Need To Know About Root Cause Analysis
• Make Your RCA More Efficient Without Losing Depth
• Fix Your Most Frequent Root Causes Workshop
• The Good, the Bad, and the Inherently Safe: Where are Your Corrective Actions
• How Improving Human Performance is Built Into TapRooT® RCA
• Investigating Near-Misses/Proactive Improvement
• Practice Using the NEW TapRooT® AI
• SuperUser Session

In addition to these sessions, the Summit includes five Keynote Speakers and a networking reception. Plus, there are seven pre-Summit Courses to choose from.

For more Summit information, CLICK HERE.