A blind drunk man was jaywalking and was hit by a distracted and inexperienced driver and died. Why did he die? There likely isn&#x27;t a singular root cause. There are 5 potential singular root causes, but they are a subset of the <i>5-factorial potential combinatorial root causes</i>.<p>I agree that solutions before problems is bad, but the five whys is problematic simply because it promotes the idea of singular root cause which is almost inevitably a fallacy when analyzing complex systems. There are often conceivably millions of overlapping and&#x2F;or interacting causes to an observable problem. Sometimes, trying to boil causality down to a single item is merely missing the point, but very often it is much more problematic. Unintended consequences from solutions derived from improperly attributed singular root causes can be terrifying.