Just Go Do an Investigation
“You’re an officer/manager/responsible person so go do an investigation of the incident.”
Terror sets in as you contemplate taking on an incident investigation. Where do I start?
We all have experience with being assigned a task we have absolutely no idea how to accomplish. We don’t have the resources or training!
The most frustrating part of investigations or incident reports is being told to “dig deeper.”
When I don’t know anything about what deeper looks like, that guidance is useless. I need a directed process and training in what that means! Being thrown into it, I bring all my own assumptions about what happened and brainstorm on my own. Give me the right questions to ask so I CAN dig deeper. Otherwise, you will get an unstandardized, unexamined, inferior report based on MY mental and literary sophistication, which may or may not meet your intent. Most people don’t even know how to accept a compliment unless it’s been modeled to them.
Train me how to interview, because I don’t know how to handle when my interviewee breaks down crying. Give me the right questions to ask the witnesses to help understand what happened. Do I have tools to develop a timeline or maintain evidence?
If you have any experience with accident investigations, audits, or proactive improvement efforts, you know that structure is crucial. Enter TapRooT® RCA. Every step along the way, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis prompts you to ask expert questions, keep your thoughts straight by developing an evidence-based timeline, and break down the mess into manageable pieces that aren’t intertwined. Investigations don’t have to be subjective, stressful, intangible, vague, or repetitive. Use TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis to find and fix every root cause the first time.
Image credit: Image by Lucas Wendt from Pixabay.
