I think there is an underlying misunderstanding with the application of "5 whys" which is a bit like the misunderstanding that people have with prioritisation.

I think there is an underlying misunderstanding with the application of "5 whys" which is a bit like the misunderstanding that people have with prioritisation. Let me diverge a bit with prioritisation: a lot of people know about the story of how to fit large rocks, medium sized rocks, small rocks and sand into a jar. You start with the largest size and work your way down to the smallest size (sand). The smaller rocks fit in the spaces of the large ones. The moral of the story is to look at the items that are most important as being large rocks and the ones that are being least important as being sand. And by doing the most important things first, you'll get everything done. Because... um... lesser important tasks fit into the spaces of more important tasks??? What??? No. This is a bad analogy that looks like's related, but isn't related in any way! Getting back to the question at hand. "5 whys = 1 how". Because if we do the root cause analysis, we will definitely find a solution to our problem. What???? Because there is always a solution to our problem??? It's that same skipping over of the most important detail: you aren't doing the most important problems first because that way there will be space for the lesser important problems. You are doing the most important problem first because then when you run out of time, you've done the most important thing! Similarly, you aren't finding a solution when you are doing root cause analysis, your are finding problems. 5 whys is a tool for helping search the problem space. That is all. The "5 whys = 1 how" quote is really unfortunate and I think it's taken completely out of context. You don't just do 5 whys once and say, "Oh now we know how to fix our problem". You keep doing the 5 whys over and over and over again so you can identify your problems. And at that point you can start to get a handle on your solutions. "5 whys = 1 how" doesn't mean there is only "1 how" that you need. And just to sum up, if one of your 5 whys ends up with "An external entity failed us", then you might need to find a way that you aren't relying on that entity. However, run some other 5 whys to help you search the problem space a bit more. You may find another "how" that will help you better.