To expand on your, correct, point, making findings of fact is a way to compartmentalize the aspects of reasoning that lead to a conclusion. If you've ever argued with someone, you know that disputes as to facts or reasoning get mixed together and continually rehashed. But disputes can be broken down into disagreements about what happened, and disagreements of what logically follows from certain premises. Then, resolving each of those disagreements individually, usually by weighing evidence against some standard, ensures forward progress towards a conclusion.