Beyond 'Root Cause': Proximate vs. Contributing Factors
A proximate cause is an incident's final trigger, while contributing factors are the conditions that made it possible. This helps post-mortems move beyond blame to find systemic risks.
Distinguish an incident's final trigger (proximate cause) from the underlying conditions that enabled it (contributing factors). A lit match is the proximate cause of a fire, but a gas leak and no smoke detectors are the contributing factors. In post-mortems, this helps identify systemic weaknesses instead of just blaming a component. The footgun is seeking a single 'root cause'; ignoring the web of contributing factors means you haven't learned from the failure and it will happen again.
Read the original → martinottaway.com
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