# Why owners are the last to see the problem in their business [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Organization source booklet: [The Thing You Are Not Doing](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/quality-control) The person least able to see the problem in your business is you, and that is not an accusation. It is how people are built, and a working method follows from it. The person least able to see the problem in your business is you. That is not an accusation and it is not a lack of talent. It is how people are built, and once you understand it you can build a way of working around it. ## It is easier to find the error in a neighbor The source says it straight out. Even while someone is looking for the cause of a departure, meaning a point where something in the business went off the course it was meant to follow, he may refuse to admit that something he did himself was the cause. Then it adds: “It requires quite a bit of character to recognize one's own errors.” The neighbor's errors, by the same source, are much easier to find. Notice that the source is not only talking about a mistake you made. It also talks about the ideal scene, meaning the way the business was supposed to look, and about why that scene never came about. Here too, the natural pull is to look for the answer anywhere except at yourself. None of this is meant to accuse you. It describes how people are made, and a method follows from it: if your own errors are hard for you to see, do not rely on what you see when you look at your own business. Suppose an owner who is certain his problem is the market. And in that very same year, three of his competitors, in the same market, grew. The opposite is the same owner sitting down and writing a list of the decisions he himself made over the last two years. Two of them explain everything that happened. The problem was not out there. It was sitting on his list. ## The reasonable explanation is what hides it The source lists several things that get in the way of analyzing a problem properly: failing to examine the scene itself, defensive reasons not to admit it, and more. In the middle of that list there is a phrase worth stopping on: “reasonableness which causes blindness to the obvious.” Reasonableness, in this sense, is the habit of accepting an explanation because it sounds sensible. Everything in a business has a reasonable explanation, and that reasonable explanation is exactly what stops you looking. Once there is an answer, the search is over. Suppose an owner who puts every weak month down to seasonality. It sounds sensible, so for four years he never once checks it. Or suppose a designer who blames her overruns on slow clients. When she finally measures, it turns out half the delay sits with her. **The reasonable explanation is the prime suspect.** When a ready answer is waiting for every dip in your numbers, the chances are you have checked none of them. ## Your failing is the one you cannot see Here the source adds an observation that closes the loop. It says altered sequences turn up far more often than one would first imagine. A sequence, in the source's language, is the order of steps in which things are meant to happen. And the reason nobody notices the breaks is simple: when someone does not think in sequence, the broken sequences in his own work stay invisible to him. The practical meaning is uncomfortable. The failing you are most blind to is precisely the failing you have. If you skip steps, you will not notice the skipping. If you do not write things down, you will not notice that the documentation is missing. Suppose an owner who has never written anything down, no procedures and no explanations. He cannot understand why his staff do not know what to do. The missing documentation is invisible to him, because it is his own. That is why looking harder will not solve it on its own. The eye doing the looking is the same eye that does not see. And time does not help. Suppose an owner in her first year who notices every detail and does not yet know what matters. By her eighth year she knows precisely what matters, and the broken door that everyone who walks in notices has become invisible to her. The familiarity gave her knowledge, and took away the eyes of someone who has just arrived. ## Where you can still see it If your eye is blind exactly where your failing sits, you need another eye. And there is one already working in your business. Suppose the same owner, after a new employee asked him three basic questions. Those questions were the mirror. They showed him exactly what was missing, the thing he had not seen for years. A new employee is the cheapest diagnostic instrument you own, for as long as they have not got used to things. Once they do, they stop asking too. This chapter has two short exercises in the booklet, one called record and one called check. The next time you have a ready answer for why something in your business is not working, treat it like a suspect. It is probably the first thing that needs checking. - [The Thing You Are Not Doing](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/quality-control): Two lenses: one that sees what is not happening, and one that tells knowing apart from doing. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/why-owners-cant-see-their-own-problems) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/why-owners-cant-see-their-own-problems)