It is important to find and correct the _______ of a problem, or the failure will only continue to happen.

• A. Root cause
• B. Symptom
• C. Temporary fix
• D. Quick workaround

Answer: (A)

The important idea here is identifying and correcting the underlying reason a failure occurs. When you fix the root cause, you remove what allowed the problem to happen in the first place, so the failure is unlikely to recur. If you only address symptoms or apply a quick workaround, the visible issue may disappear temporarily, but the fundamental problem remains, so the failure is likely to come back and cause more downtime or damage. In practice, engineers use root-cause analysis to trace back from the symptom to the real cause and implement a lasting corrective action, rather than just treating the surface issue.