The cause may be boring even when the consequence is dramatic.

Big consequences often have small, unglamorous origins. A missed check, a dull piece of maintenance, a sentence nobody read carefully. Because the effect is dramatic, the mind looks for a cause of matching size and skips right past the ordinary thing that actually did it.

When investigating something serious, resist the pull toward an explanation as interesting as the event. Check the boring possibilities first. They are more common, and they are usually the ones you can still do something about.