There is very rarely one “root cause” of an incident. And often, certain causes are harder to flag up than others:
The reason is not that “incorrect configuration value” is somehow objectively more causal than power dynamics. Rather, the sorts of things that are allowed to be labelled as causes depends on the cultural norms of an organization. This is what people mean when they say that causes are socially constructed.
And who gets to determine what’s allowed to be labelled as a cause and what isn’t is itself a property of power dynamics. Because the things that are allowed to be called causes are things that an organization is willing to label as a problem, which means that it’s something that can receive organizational attention and resources in order to be addressed.
– What’s allowed to count as a cause?
Bonus from the same site: You’ll never see attrition referenced in an RCA