When doing Root Cause Analysis, and this cause is identified as the 'root cause', is this ever reason enough? Or does it beg more delving for an even deeper root cause? I'm seeing this identified as the 'root cause' for some corrective actions and it concerns me that people aren't following procedures as they should. If this is happening across several business functions, it would indicate a systemic problem, would it not?
It just makes me want to ask one more 'why?' when I see "did not follow procedures" as a root cause on a corrective action request.
Thoughts?
I think it's a question of scale more than anything else. An isolated incident might not need corrective action, and the fact that the same issue has occurred in more than one business function isn't necessarily an indication of a systemic breakdown.
Think about it this way: Suppose, for the category "Following Procedures," There are a few hundred opportunities every day. This isn't a stretch for even some small companies. When procedures aren't followed, generally two things can happen:
- Nothing
- Something bad
While we need to be concerned about both, it's the second one that causes the most concern, and rightfully so. Nonetheless, given the number of opportunities, the "Something bad" could be insignificant and unfixable.
If you suspect that procedures not being followed is a significant concern, you'll gain little by bouncing the CA responses and asking for a bunch of "whys." Use your internal audit process, especially in those cases where someone has used not following procedures as an answer. See what you can do to help. Maybe procedures are too rigid, maybe there are attitude problems, maybe training is an issue. There could be lots of different causes, but the best thing you can do, imo, is audit and find out what's really going on, and then find out how you can help to fix whatever might be broken.