Have you ever gotten into a discussion of why? because. Why? because.  Last weekend I had the great pleasure of this discussion for what seemed to be the first time.  I never really put much thought into it but asking why never really was a difficulty for me.
  Oftentimes when we want to use the 5 whys to drill from issue to root cause we end up in a pattern of why, because. Why, because.  Or, we conduct a long analysis only to find out that none of our levels of causation matched at all.  One of the best known examples of a 5 why analysis was performed by the master Taiichi Ohno.  He used the example of a welding robot stopping in the middle of its operation.  Like a sensei does he naturally went from initial issue to root cause with almost no difficulty at all.   So, how do we begin developing this level of mastery with regards to root cause analysis?  Here are a few important things to keep in mind when looking for the ROOT cause.