This ITIL4F practice question tests your understanding of itil service value system. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
An IT team is reviewing a recurring incident pattern. They decide to find the root cause to prevent future occurrences. Which practice are they applying?
Incident Management
Why wrong: Incident Management restores service, not finds root cause.
Service Desk
Why wrong: Service Desk is a function, not a practice for root cause analysis.
Problem Management
Problem Management analyzes incidents to find underlying causes.
Change Enablement
Why wrong: Change Enablement handles changes, not incident analysis.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Problem Management
Problem Management (C) is the correct practice because it focuses on identifying the root cause of recurring incidents to prevent future occurrences. The IT team's decision to analyze a recurring incident pattern and find its root cause aligns directly with the proactive and reactive activities of Problem Management, which aims to minimize the impact of incidents and prevent them from happening again.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Incident Management
Why it's wrong here
Incident Management restores service, not finds root cause.
Service Desk
Why it's wrong here
Service Desk is a function, not a practice for root cause analysis.
Problem Management
Why this is correct
Problem Management analyzes incidents to find underlying causes.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Change Enablement
Why it's wrong here
Change Enablement handles changes, not incident analysis.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates confuse the 'restoration of service' focus of Incident Management with the 'root cause analysis and prevention' focus of Problem Management, especially when the question mentions a 'recurring incident pattern' which might seem like an incident handling task.
Detailed technical explanation
In ITIL 4, Problem Management includes both reactive and proactive activities. The reactive aspect involves analyzing incidents that have already occurred to identify underlying causes, while the proactive aspect seeks to prevent incidents before they happen by identifying potential weaknesses. A real-world scenario is when a network team notices repeated connectivity drops at a specific time each day; Problem Management would analyze logs, identify a misconfigured SNMP polling interval causing a switch CPU spike, and implement a permanent fix, whereas Incident Management would only restore connectivity each time.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A small business has 20 workstations on the 192.168.1.0/24 network and one public IP from its ISP. The router uses PAT (NAT overload) so all 20 devices share one public address using different source ports. NAT questions test whether you understand the four address terms and which direction each translation applies.
What to study next
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FAQ
ITIL Service Value System — This question tests ITIL Service Value System — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Problem Management — Problem Management (C) is the correct practice because it focuses on identifying the root cause of recurring incidents to prevent future occurrences. The IT team's decision to analyze a recurring incident pattern and find its root cause aligns directly with the proactive and reactive activities of Problem Management, which aims to minimize the impact of incidents and prevent them from happening again.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
This ITIL4F practice question is part of Courseiva's free PeopleCert certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ITIL4F exam.
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