That said, if you look at a system that failed and determine a root cause analysis is pointless, you may have just stumbled upon your root cause.
That's because manufacturing is a simpler environment where causes and consequences are more conceptually distinct.
Until you start to pull management decisions into your analysis, of course. Then it becomes just as complex as software.
Meaning, having something like "management will decide not to fund maintenance for this component in the future, causing a failure" in your fault tree?
It's safer to say 'does this failure mean I need to change the system?'. Otherwise you're still facing the single cause trap.
"Something" does not have to mean "one single thing". But I would be fine with your phraseology if it ended up making it clearer to whoever was doing the analysis.