fix the engine, or turn up the radio?

You're driving down the road, and all of a sudden you're car's engine starts making a loud "ker-chunk, ker-chunk" sound.  You can hardly hear the radio over the din!

You have two choices: fix the engine, or turn up the radio.

Obviously, this is an analogy. I'm really talking about my experience as an engineer and dealing with software problems.

The point I'm trying to get to is that you have two options when you encountered a problem. One is to figure out what's wrong "loud noise coming from the engine" and fix it. The alternative is to address the side effect "can't hear the radio".

Sadly, from my years working in engineering I've encountered too many people who choose to elect for the latter, i.e., "turn up the radio", rather than making the effort to "fix the engine".