Examples are everywhere.  In fact, almost every human interaction is an example.  Here are a few off the top of my head:<p>Quality control rejected one program because it was indented 4 spaces instead of the standard 5, but accepted another, even though it had enough memory leaks to crash the server under certain conditions.  The first was a detail; the second was an issue.  It took me 2 days to get Q.C. to understand the difference.<p>A friend recently arrived for a dinner party an hour late and then complained to me that another spoke with her mouth full.  As far as I was concerned, the first was an issue and the second was a detail.  My friend thought otherwise about both.<p>Accounting recently spent 3 days implementing a new key policy for the private rest rooms (presumably to prevent theft) and then wrote off $50,000 of inventory because no one could find the proper paperwork.  IMO, the former was a detail upon which much time was wasted and the latter was an issue that never actually got dealt with.<p>We spent the first hour of a recent meeting trying to determine naming conventions, but ran out of time before we decided if the customer's credit limit should be split between 2 divisions.  Again, wasting time on details and not dealing with real issues.  (This is a great example.  One of the best ways to lose your shirt is to not deal with credit/collection/accounts receivable issues.)<p>My favorite on-line example: A few years ago here on hn, I posted examples of how I found some of my customers.  I expected some interesting discussion, but the thread was hijacked because of the presence of 2 concepts in my original post "Bible" and "pawn shop".  Lots of issues that could have provided value for people were never explored because the gang preferred to beat a detail to death.  Unfortunately this sort of thing happens quite a bit on-line.<p>Funny how I still remember that thread.  Here it is:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182400" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182400</a>