The basic purpose of the present study was to assess the root causes and provoking factors of cheating during an examination and to propose possible solutions to take corrective actions in public secondary schools in Gedeo zone, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region, Ethiopia. Because of the homogeneity of schools, five schools were randomly selected out of the 24 public secondary schools in the Zone. Similarly, 387 student samples were taken by using simple random sampling techniques to give equal chances to all respondents, while 10 school principals and 10 teachers were selected by availability sampling. The research adopted an embedded mixed (QUANT+qual) design. Questionnaires (quantitative data) for students and unstructured interviews (qualitative data) for principals and teachers were used as collecting instruments. Besides descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, multiple correlations, and multiple linear regression using model IBM SPSS Statistics 20 were used. The result of the study signifies the positive and direct relationships between cheating and the predictor variables. The study is expected to provide evidence-based information for curriculum developers, policy makers, educational officials, school principals, science teachers, and school communities as a whole. The report also adds new knowledge to the existing literature.