I think that in reality it is helpful in most situations, as you are most likely doing the analysis to decide on actions to do, which are interventions and thus

I think that in reality it is helpful in most situations, as you are most likely doing the analysis to decide on actions to do, which are interventions and thus assume a causal graph. It’s just that, normally, the impact of misidentifying a correlation as a cause is cheap, and corrected soon enough, so even if it is helpful, it is not essential, and it might not even justify the extra effort.