What this technique is missing is how to get yourself out of the trap of self-delusion. It is easy to lie to yourself when answering any of the why questions because our brains will more likely choose a comfortable answer instead of the right one. Instead of getting to the root cause one can easily get to the trap.

I believe the actual technique should be like “break 5 layers of your confidence in a given problem and _question_ everything about it until you build the whole picture”.

In other words instead of asking why 5 times question everything and unwind the knot until you have a straight thread. Sometimes it is not just 5 layers deep.

And one should be brave enough to put their own beliefs and experience under doubt and reassess them from the ground up.

That’s the path that leads to some really interesting questions about yourself, the world around, about other people. That’s what ignites the thought process.

5 whys is an oversimplification of the actual reasoning process. And as with other ideas that get wrapped up in a fancy proverbial form it can be misleading and turns to a cargo cult.

Start with “why should I trust the 5 whys? Will it really lead me to right answers? How? What if the answer is no?”