I'm with you on this one. Especially in an iterative context, there is zero value in looking for the true root cause.
The point of the exercise is to identify economical interventions that will get the system to produce better results. If you go much beyond that, people can get off into moral, analytical, or philosophical weeds and get lost.
As long as you do retrospectives and five-whys frequently, you can count on useful analytical depth to come over time. If an issue is really both important and subtle, it will crop up again. The next time you'll have another perspective, so it will be easier to find. And by waiting, you'll have avoided examining all the equally subtle but unimportant things.
The point of the exercise is to identify economical interventions that will get the system to produce better results. If you go much beyond that, people can get off into moral, analytical, or philosophical weeds and get lost.
As long as you do retrospectives and five-whys frequently, you can count on useful analytical depth to come over time. If an issue is really both important and subtle, it will crop up again. The next time you'll have another perspective, so it will be easier to find. And by waiting, you'll have avoided examining all the equally subtle but unimportant things.