Element element element element element what should be investigated?

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1.4
ELEMENT 1.1
ELEMENT 1.4
ELEMENT 1.2
ELEMENT 1.3
ELEMENT 1.5
Blame culture
KEY TERMS
Blame culture
“The tendency to look for one person or organisation that can be held responsible for a bad state of affairs, 
an accident, etc.”
Collins English Dictionary
Copyright ©HarperCollins Publishers
It is likely you will have encountered the term ‘blame culture’, 
which should be self-explanatory. A blame culture is the default 
culture due to human beings’ inherent need to put blame 
outside of ourselves. 
An organisation that has a blame culture seeks to find out who 
is responsible, so that blame can be attributed to an individual 
or group of people. This could lead to punishment, possibly 
disciplinary action, maybe dismissal, perhaps some retraining 
and certainly the blame for the incident being placed on an 
individual or group. You may consider this fair or not, but if 
the focus is on blaming people, this culture will not encourage 
the sharing of information on actions that led to errors; people 
do not want to be blamed! In this culture, people are unlikely to share this knowledge or report incidents as they are afraid of 
recriminations. There will also usually be a lack of organisational learning where a blame culture exists. 
It is, therefore, unlikely that a ‘blame culture’ is going to lead to long-term improvement of health and safety. Blaming people 
often seems to provide an easy way to show that ‘justice has been done’, and is certainly less complex and time-consuming 
than properly investigating the issue, reviewing and changing processes and procedures; this is why ‘blame culture’ seems so 
prolific. 
As mentioned earlier, a blame culture is a default ‘setting’. Workers within an organisation can believe that their organisation 
has a blame culture (default setting) when, in fact, this is not the case. However, just the belief in an organisational blame 
culture can be enough to stop workers reporting incidents. 
Essentially, where people feel they are likely to be held accountable for their part in an incident, or likely to be blamed for an 
equipment fault or error, they are far less likely to be open and honest about their role in the incident during an interview. This 
perception on the part of the interviewee can greatly hinder an investigation. However, in some cases, the investigation may 
conclude there was one or more individuals at fault. Individual fault should only be identified as a last resort when all avenues 
for organisational learning have been exhausted.

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NEBOSH HSE Introduction to Incident Investigation