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Comment by indymike | Hacker News Reader

Five Whys is just a tool. It really only works if it is used as a tool for finding truth and improving process. It is really dangerous in the hands of people who wish to use a process failure for political gain.

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I think the most helpful thing with five whys is that it counter acts blame-games within an organisation. Normally when something happens the natural reaction is to blame someone that did something which is counterproductive, it feels good for everybody else but it doesn’t change anything. But five whys is just a method, for it to work there needs to be a true will to actually change and improve things.

Counteracting blame game comes down to being careful not to ever use certain phrasing common to the enemy. We just had one I threatened to cancel because one of the lead developers was asking how a decision happened and using The Tone.

It’s not a matter of whose hands the hammer is in. Nobody gets to use it at all or everyone will.

Was about to say. Plenty of the examples in this topic seems to want to use it to assign blame and to find the ultimate culprit.. that is not the point. You most likely already know who/what the culprit is, so the 5 why's should be an introspective tool to figure out any unforeseen side effects.

Agreed. In constructive environment with high levels of trust you can often take a shortcut and simply ask: What problem are we actually trying to solve?

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