A profiling program determines a set of routines that impacts the performance of a selected root routine. Because the set of routines impacts the performance of the routine of interest, the members of the set are excellent candidates for profiling in order to more precisely measure the performance the selected root routine. Thus, routines that cannot be reached from the root routine need not be profiled, thereby reducing the amount of profiling code injected into a target program, and thereby reducing execution inefficiency of the target program.