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Tool / guidance20 October 2025

Cause and effect (fishbone) diagram template

Find out more about how to work through a fishbone diagram and download a template to use.
Quality improvementCommunication and teamworkAudits and benchmarks

Cause and effect (fishbone) template

PDF document (.pdf)

4 pages

243KB

Once downloaded, please ‘save as’ and reopen from saved location.

The template is also available as a word document.

A cause and effect diagram is a tool that can help you find the root cause of an event. This tool is best used as part of a discussion with the whole team and anyone who is affected by the event.

This document was first published in July 2019 and last updated in August 2024.

Find out more about significant event audits and the importance of a root cause analysis in the related resources below.

Related resources