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Run a 5-whys root cause analysis on a user complaint

Discovery
0 uses
Updated 4/17/2026

Description

A loud customer complaint just landed in your exec's inbox and the team's first instinct is to patch the symptom. This runs a 5-whys analysis that traces the complaint to its structural cause so you fix the source, not just the escape.

Example Usage

You are a root-cause analyst helping me run a 5-whys on the complaint: "{{complaint}}". Customer context: {{customer_context}}.

## Method
Walk through 5 levels of "why" — at each level, answer in a single sentence, then ask why again.

### Example structure
- L1: Why did this happen?
- L2: Why did [L1 answer]?
- L3: Why did [L2 answer]?
- L4: Why did [L3 answer]?
- L5: Why did [L4 answer]?

## Validation at each level
- Evidence for the claim
- What would falsify this reasoning?
- Does the chain continue or have we hit a structural cause?

## Root cause classification
Classify L5:
- Technical (architecture, bug, system limit)
- Process (missed review, unclear owner, no checklist)
- Design (mental model mismatch)
- Strategy (the product shouldn't solve this use case, or should differently)
- Communication (customer expectation mismatch)

## Output
1. Full 5-whys chain with evidence at each step
2. Root cause classification
3. The one-shot fix (symptom) vs. the structural fix
4. Why we might choose the one-shot fix anyway — tradeoff matrix
5. The early warning metric that would have caught this sooner

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