Conducting an RCA alone presents unique challenges, but it doesn’t change the goal: a thorough, unbiased, and actionable investigation. Without a team to provide feedback, challenge assumptions, and generate creative solutions, the solo investigator must be more deliberate and disciplined at every step.
Do We Always Need a Team to Perform a Good RCA?
Language: ENG USA Date: 02/25/2025 Author: Brian Hughes Link: https://www.sologic.com/en-us/resources/blog/english/ team-or-alone
Summary: Conducting an RCA alone presents unique challenges, but it doesn’t change the goal: a thorough, unbiased, and actionable investigation. Without a team to provide feedback, challenge assumptions, and generate creative solutions, the solo investigator must be more deliberate and disciplined at every step. TL;DR: Conducting an RCA alone? You need to compensate for the lack of a team by being more structured and deliberate. • Gather Evidence Thoroughly: Use multiple sources and check for bias. • Define the Problem Clearly: Ensure your problem statement is precise and aligns with stakeholder expectations. • Analyze Causes with Depth: Go beyond surface-level explanations and use conditional logic to uncover systemic contributors. • Develop Meaningful Solutions: Avoid easy fixes—alter the context to reduce risk sustainably. • Report for Action: Structure findings for clarity so leadership understands and acts on real improvements. Even without a team, you can still achieve a high-quality RCA by applying structure, discipline, and critical thinking. Introduction While working alone presents challenges, the fundamental goals of an RCA don’t change. Whether you have a full team or you’re the sole investigator, you’re still responsible for gathering evidence, understanding the context of the issue, analyzing causes, developing meaningful solutions, and communicating findings effectively. The difference? Without a team, the burden falls entirely on you to ensure that the analysis is thorough, that biases are checked, and that solutions address not just the immediate issue but the broader systemic contributors. You won’t have multiple perspectives naturally challenging assumptions or prompting deeper investigation—so you have to build that challenge into your own process.
Let’s walk through the key areas of an RCA and how you can adapt when working alone.
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Step 1: Gathering & Interpreting Evidence—Capturing Reality Before It Changes A strong RCA starts with good evidence. That doesn’t change whether you’re working alone or with a team. What does change is the margin for error —without multiple people reviewing the data, it’s up to you to make sure no critical piece of evidence is overlooked. One way to do that is to be systematic in how you gather evidence. Sologic RCA follows a simple method for ensuring a complete picture: • People – Interview those directly involved, but be aware of bias in their perspectives. • Hardware/Software/Systems – Look at physical equipment, IT systems, and process data logs. • Procedures & Documentation – Review training materials, SOPs, work orders, and policies to see if expectations match reality. • Environment – Consider external conditions like time of day, weather, workload, or regulatory requirements that might have influenced the event. But collecting raw evidence isn’t enough—you also need to lay the groundwork for a broader contextual understanding. Ask yourself: • Have I discovered what a ‘normal’ day looks like? • What made this day different? • What risks are we asking people to manage – and get right – in order to succeed? Failures don’t happen in isolation—they often emerge because something about the environment, workload, or process was different than usual. But this can be a trap. If you’re not looking for context in which that variation takes place, you will miss the deeper contributors that made the failure possible. At the same time, be mindful of bias—both your own and that of others. With a team, there’s an immediate feedback loop. People naturally challenge each other’s assumptions. When working alone, you have to create that challenge yourself by deliberately questioning your own thought process. Step 2: Writing a Problem Statement—Framing the Issue with Context in Mind A well-defined problem statement is the foundation of an effective RCA. It sets the scope of the investigation, keeps the analysis focused, and ensures the real issue is being addressed—not just its symptoms. This is true whether working alone or with a team. But when working solo, it becomes even more critical because you don’t have a group to help refine it. A Sologic Problem Statement includes the following: The Focal Point—What Happened? • State the problem in neutral, fact-based terms. • Confirm with stakeholders: If we solve this, will you consider the RCA a success? If not, refine the focal point to align expectations before proceeding.
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When & Where Did It Happen? • Be as specific as possible. What Was the Impact—Both Actual and Potential? • Document what has already happened. • Consider how bad this could have been had it gone undetected. • Assess whether this risk has existed for some time without being addressed. By taking the time to clearly define the problem upfront, a solo investigator sets the stage for meaningful analysis and real improvement. Step 3: Analyzing Causes—Going Beyond the Immediate to the Contextual Once you’ve gathered evidence and framed the problem, it’s time to analyze causes. This is where working alone presents a unique challenge—without a team, it’s easier to settle on surface-level explanations or unconsciously confirm your own assumptions. To counter this, you have to be deliberate about challenging your own thinking and pushing beyond obvious causes. Think Beyond a Simple Cause-and-Effect Chain One of the biggest mistakes in solo RCA work is treating causation as a single-threaded, linear path—but most real-world failures don’t happen that way. Instead of asking, “What is the cause?” ask, “What combination of causes led to this outcome?” Many failures occur due to multiple interacting causes that together created the conditions for the event. This is where conditional logic becomes critical. Ask two questions: • What caused this effect? • Every time this cause occurs, does it always result in this effect? Instead of stopping at a single cause , look for combinations of contributors that made the failure possible. And don’t stop at human error – more on that here! Bias Management in Cause Analysis When working solo, bias management is especially important because you don’t have a team to challenge your thinking. Without that external feedback loop, it’s easy to fall into common cognitive traps that distort cause analysis. Some key biases to watch for: • Confirmation Bias – The tendency to favor evidence that supports what you already believe while ignoring or downplaying contradictory data. A good practice is to actively look for disconfirming evidence —ask yourself, What facts would prove me wrong?
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• Jumping to Conclusions (or Solutions) – There’s a natural tendency to want to “solve” the problem quickly, which can lead to rushing through cause analysis before fully understanding the issue. A thorough analysis prevents treating symptoms instead of root causes. • Over-Attributing Problems to Human Actions – It’s easy to default to the belief that people are the primary cause of most problems , rather than the systems they operate within. However, most human errors are symptoms of deeper systemic weaknesses By using conditional logic, structured cause patterns, testing assumptions, and leveraging AI for validation, a solo investigator can ensure a thorough, well-reasoned analysis—without the need for a team to challenge their thinking. Step 4 - Generating Solutions A strong RCA doesn’t just explain what happened—it drives meaningful change to reduce the likelihood of recurrence. However, solution generation is often where RCAs fall short, especially when working alone. Without a team, it’s easy to default to the quickest or most convenient fixes. But real improvement doesn’t come from making people work harder—it comes from making the system work better. Focus on Altering Context, Not Just Reacting to Failure When generating solutions, ask: • Does this solution alter the conditions that allowed the failure to happen? If not, it may not be enough. • Would this solution have prevented the problem entirely, or just helped someone react to it faster? • Is this sustainable? Solutions should be embedded in how work naturally happens—not just tacked on as an extra rule or expectation. Avoid the trap of going for what’s easy, cheap, or fast. Senior leaders may favor quick solutions, but a solo investigator must think beyond that. A checklist might remind operators to double-check a setting, but a design change could eliminate the need for the check altogether.
Applying Conditional Logic to Solutions
Just as failures often have combinations of causes, the best solutions often involve multiple reinforcing improvements. Instead of searching for one perfect solution , consider solutions that: • Eliminate the cause – Can the failure mechanism be removed entirely? • Reduce the probability – Can safeguards or redundancies make recurrence less likely? • Reduce the impact – If failure does happen, can we limit the consequences? • Increase detectability – Can early warning systems help prevent escalation? • Improve system resilience – Can the system recover quickly instead of failing catastrophically? Leveraging AI to Strengthen Solutions
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When working alone, it can be difficult to think beyond familiar solutions. This is where AI can be a valuable asset. Causelink’s Solutions AI feature will help solo investigators by providing additional solution ideas that may not have been considered. Refined Section: Step 5 - Reporting & Communicating Findings A strong RCA isn’t just about finding causes and generating solutions—it’s about ensuring those solutions are understood, supported, and implemented. Your findings may be solid, but if they aren’t communicated effectively, decision-makers may overlook key insights, misinterpret conclusions, or dismiss critical recommendations. A well-structured RCA report should: • Tell the full story – Not just what happened, but why it happened and what can be done to prevent it. • Highlight systemic contributors – Fixing a single issue won’t prevent recurrence unless deeper conditions are addressed. • Make the case for meaningful change – Show why solutions that alter context are better than quick, surface-level fixes. A well-written report isn’t just about presenting facts—it’s about guiding the reader toward understanding and action. How AI Enhances RCA Reporting Writing an RCA report—especially alone—can be a challenge. You need to distill complex findings into something clear, persuasive, and actionable. Causelink’s AI-powered reporting feature helps by: • Structuring the report for clarity – Ensuring all key elements are included in a logical flow. • Generating well-worded summary statements – Making it easier to communicate findings concisely. AI doesn’t replace a skilled investigator, but it removes friction from the reporting process—allowing you to focus on what matters: driving real improvements.
By structuring findings clearly, tailoring the message to different audiences, and using AI-powered tools to improve clarity, a solo investigator can create a report that doesn’t just inform—it creates change.
Conclusion: Doing More With Less—The Solo Investigator’s Challenge Conducting an RCA alone doesn’t change the fundamentals of the process—it simply shifts more of the burden onto you. Every step that benefits from a team’s input—gathering evidence, identifying causes, challenging assumptions, generating solutions, and driving action—still needs to happen. The difference is that, as a solo investigator, you have to actively create the conditions that a team would naturally provide.
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That means: • More diligence in gathering evidence – Seeking multiple sources to compensate for the lack of immediate peer review. • More discipline in framing the problem – Ensuring clarity without relying on group refinement. • More rigor in analyzing causes – Using conditional logic, testing for bias, and challenging assumptions without external input. • More creativity in generating solutions – Thinking beyond what’s easy, cheap, or familiar to truly alter context. • More intentionality in reporting – Structuring findings for clarity and ensuring they lead to action. It’s a lot. But it’s doable—especially when using structured approaches, cause patterns, and AI-powered tools like Causelink to provide additional perspectives, challenge assumptions, and enhance clarity. Ultimately, an individual-led RCA should aim to achieve the same quality and depth as a team-led RCA—it just requires more effort, more awareness, and a more deliberate approach to make it happen. By following the strategies shared in this blog, solo investigators can bring the benefits of team collaboration into their individual work —ensuring their RCA findings are just as thorough, insightful, and impactful.
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