Fact Finding Exercise

an alternative view of the 5 whys

Hi Shana

 As Steve says, using the 5 Whys literally can be a bit childlike....therefore here is an example of using the principles rather than the actuality of the word "why"....

“Can you tell me[1], in your own words, what happened?”

“Well, I downloaded your enormous application form off the website and filled it all in, then I posted it off to you.  I didn’t hear anything back for over a week then I just got a call out of the blue from a surveyor’s secretary who wanted to arrange a valuation. She was able to get the visit in really quickly; literally 48 hours but unfortunately we simply couldn’t move that fast out without notice, so we scheduled it for four days time.  The valuer came and was very quick and professional.  We then waited another week/10 days for the valuation to come through but instead we got a call from a lawyer asking about the Deed of Covenant with our neighbours.

Well nearly three weeks had passed by now and we were getting desperate, the people selling the house we were after were getting worried that we weren’t serious and were threatening to put it on the open market.  My wife saw an advert for the other bunch and phoned them.  They took her details over the phone and arranged a valuation there and then, for the following day!

Their valuer turned up on the dot, spent forty minutes looking round the house, and gave us his valuation there and then; he’d already been around the local estate agent looking at similar properties so he was really on the ball.  At that point we just decided to go with them.”

“Thanks, you described our application form as “enormous”, can you explain why?”[2]

“Yeah, it just seemed to go on forever! If I remember rightly it was four pages long and it seemed to ask all sorts of questions that didn’t have much point”

“Can[3] you remember which ones?”

“Well I couldn’t see the necessity for all the detail about former spouses~ I mean it is irrelevant!”

“Does[4] your former spouse have an ownership or claim on the property?”

“No!”

“But I’m sure you can see that if she had it would have been relevant!”

“True”

“So can you see[5] that we had to ask that question in order to eliminate that?”

“Yes, but you could have started by simply asking “does anyone else have an interest in the property? Then when I answered no I wouldn’t have had to give lots of irrelevant information”

“Good point, thanks, I’ll recommend a change in the form. You say that you sent the form in and then heard nothing until the surveyor’s office called you, is that right[6]?”

“Yes”

“What[7] would you have liked to have happen?”

“An acknowledgement of receipt and a brief explanation of what would happen next would have been nice”

“OK Thanks, can I assume[8] that the same would have been nice after the surveyor had visited, before you heard from the lawyers?”

“Too true, we felt we’d been forgotten about; I mean the other lot gave their valuation immediately but with your lot we didn’t actually get the valuation til the offer arrived, which was something like 5 weeks after we first contacted you and about two weeks after we went to the other lot; in fact your offer arrived the day before we exchanged contracts to sell the house!”

“Oh, well I’m sorry about that, may I ask[9], did you actually look at our offer when it arrived?”

“Oh yeah, it was too late but out of interest we looked, at it?”

“And was it an attractive offer[10]?”

“In fact it was slightly above the offer we accepted with the other firm”

“So had it arrived much sooner[11] you may have done the deal with us?”

“Yes, it was all in the timing, we were desperate to get the sale sorted out quickly and your lot were just not fast enough”.

[1] First level of questioning

[2] Second level of questioning

[3] Third level of questioning

[4] Fourth level of questioning

[5] fifth level of questioning

[6] New subject of questioning

[7] First level of questioning

[8] Second level of questioning

[9] Third level of questioning

[10] Fourth level of questioning

[11] Fifth level of questioning

This is an example that I wrote recently as an example in a specific case study....I won't bore you with the detail of the case study but I think the dialogue is fairly self-explanatory

I hope this helps

Rus

www.coach-and-courses.com