The Five Whys technique is an easy question posing option that examines the cause-and-effect relationships that underly problems. Like the fish-bone technique, this approach is helpful to generate a general understanding of expected results related to different project activities. Each series of why’s starts with a problem your project aims to address. This could also be a change you aim to see. You then ask, “why would/did this happen?”, discuss the response, then report the question and response process.

This tool is appropriate for project levels 0-2 (see the M&E Capacity Checklist tool).