Another analogy: Incident Investigations and Jawbreaker (gobstopper) candy - IR musings

After a couple of vacations to a country under lockdown due to the novel coronavirus, my first experience taking a SANS course, a bout of (regular strain of) flu, and some consistently busy work weeks, I'm back with yet another analogy.

In looking up a reliable reference page to link to describe the jawbreaker candy, I discovered that in the regions outside of North America they seem to be called gobstoppers. If you can't be bothered to follow the above link, here are some salient excerpts:

Gobstoppers usually consist of a number of layers, each layer dissolving to reveal a differently coloured (and sometimes differently flavoured) layer, before dissolving completely. Gobstoppers are too hard to bite without risking dental damage (hence the name "jawbreaker").

[snip]

As gobstoppers dissolve very slowly, they last a very long time in the mouth, which is a major factor in their enduring popularity with children. Larger ones can take days or even weeks* to fully dissolve.

The article also mentions how the "core" around which these different layers are deposited is often a spherical piece of chewing gum.

By now, one hopes that (by reading the most recent posts I've erratically written) the analogy has become clear to my readers:

• Each instance of candy-like object which our team receives is, at minimum, an event or in fact usually represents a series of events. 
• Whether one actually constitutes an incident must be determined by triage (tasting it). 
• The layers could represent both the discoveries the response team makes during the investigation, as well as the stages of incident response. The flavours, colours, and even textures are often unpredictable, and appearances may also be deceiving. 
• We cannot rush through each layer - they must be dissolved and worked through sequentially. 
• At the end when we work on the RCA and action plan, we figuratively chew on the core of the confection, usually until our jaws begin to feel fatigued. 

I have a colleague who has been using a less esoteric foodstuff for their analogy: the bulb (of common) onion. But I prefer something less conducive to weeping and over the last 9 months or so, I've remained fortunate in not having too many high stress cases to manage.

*I have never seen anyone work on digesting such a large or difficult gobstopper - do they leave it on their bedside table while they sleep? Incidents do, however, take at least a few hours, often weeks, and sometimes months before they can be closed.