Our minds continually perform root cause analysis, which is a way of answering our questions about our surroundings and quenching our curiosity. We establish cause-and-effect relationships between what we see and what we do, or what we get and what we do, or what we want to get and what we need to do. In driving on the road, one is continually conducting cause-and-effect analyses and adjusting the causes accordingly to prevent accidents or other undesired outcomes. When we lose sight of root cause analysis (i.e., take a wrong action), accidents occur. Then we call relatives, the police and insurance agents to help us out. They start doing a root cause analysis by asking questions like, “What happened?” “What did you do?” “Who got the ticket?” and finally, “Are you OK?” Everyone is doing root cause analysis all the time to understand why something happens.Accidents continually occur in the business world, causing damage to products and services, but it’s the corporation and/or the customers that suffer. Accidents are attributed to excessive deviation from established good practices. So when excessive deviation occurs, defects are produced and products are repaired, scrapped or even shipped “as is.” In other words, damage to the product damages the user, just like cars and passengers in a road accident. Similarly, the investigation must then begin in the case of business accidents or excessive deviation.

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