Watching the news this past week, I couldn’t help but notice how several members of the House of Representatives were grilling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on his apparent lack of effort in policing the political ads for truth and veracity.

You’ll find many people who are bigger fans of Facebook than me. And, Mr. Zuckerberg as a tech titan and billionaire certainly doesn’t need help in defending himself against any accusations. However, I do think the questions posed so aggressively to him illuminate a greater challenge:

• We often attempt to placate the situation and overlook solving the problem.

As my friends, Mark Mayfield and George Campbell, pointed out in their daily “FunnierU” posts, perhaps the problem here isn’t that Facebook isn’t vetting political ads correctly. The real problem is that we have people who are evidently depending on Facebook for their information.

We see this in businesses all the time. For example, when we have a dissatisfied customer, we often do what it takes to make her feel better. “We are so sorry, Ms. Smith — we’ll refund your purchase and give you 10% off your next one with us!”

Don’t get me wrong — we need to do what it takes to ensure customers are happy they’ve chosen to do business with us. However, the real problem isn’t the upset client — it’s that something in our process either broke down or is inadequate to thrill the people who are buying from us. But, typically, we placate the customer…and move on…leaving the process unaltered.

It’s easier to chastise Facebook than it is to fix the problem of voter apathy and misinformation. It’s easier to refund or discount than it is to analyze the process and change “the way we’ve always done it.”

• However, the critical question is: are we doing the same thing in our business?

The next time someone is dissatisfied — to any degree — with your products or services, open yourself to going deeper. “Why,” you must ask, “did this happen? AND, how do we fix the process that created the friction with our customer?”

It might be that you had a policy in place that was perfectly acceptable five years ago — and isn’t adequate today. It could be that employees haven’t been thoroughly trained and aren’t well equipped to serve in the manner that customers seek.

Don’t be afraid to go negative to root out the issues that must be examined. I like to call this “positive negativity.” By that, I mean that by being willing to go negative and seek what’s wrong, we can take the steps that ensure everything goes right in the future.

• Let’s not settle for the easy way out.

Let’s find a way to resolve the REAL issues instead of putting Band-Aids on the symptoms.