Root cause analysis and blameless post-incident reviews
Find out why something really went wrong and stop it happening again: separate the trigger from the root cause and contributing factors, use Five Whys and cause categories without stopping at a person, build an evidence-based timeline, and write a blameless review with actions that change systems rather than asking people to 'be more careful'.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Length
- About 50 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 1 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Distinguish the trigger (proximate cause), root cause and contributing factors of an incident
- Apply Five Whys and recognize when it has stopped at a person or a single chain
- Group possible causes by category to avoid missing process and tooling factors
- Build an incident timeline from evidence with sources and times
- Write post-incident actions that are specific, owned, dated and change the system
Course outline
- 1.Root causes and blameless reviewsVideo · 2 min
- 2.Trigger, root cause and contributing factorsLesson · 16 min
- 3.Timeline and evidenceLesson · 15 min
- 4.Blameless reviews and actions that stickLesson · 15 min
- 5.Root cause analysis and blameless post-incident reviews: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 17 questions
- 6.Final exam9 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
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