Most will hide it away because being truthful will hurt current business or future career prospects because people like yourself exist who want everyone shitting themselves at the prospect of being honest.
In a blame free environment you find the underlying issue and fix it. In a blame full environment you cover up the mistake to avoid being fired and some other person does it again later down the line
There’s a third option where people accept responsibility and are rewarded for that rather than hide from it one way or another.
I have a modicum of respect for people who do that. I don’t for people who shovel it under a rug or point a finger which are the points you are referring to. I’ve been in both environments and neither end up with a positive outcome.
If I fuck up I’m the first person to put my hand up. Call it responsibility culture.
I think you missing point, I love the idea about "bringing aviation methodology" to lower error/f-up-rates" for the software industry.
No one is not saying don't take responsibility, they are saying - as I understood it:
Have a "systematic-approach" to the problem, the current system for preventing "drunk pilots or the wiping of production db's are not sufficient" - improve the system ! ! All the "taking responsibilities and "falling on one's own sword" won't improve the process for the future.
If we take the example of the Space-Industry where having 3x Backups Systems are common (like life support)
It seems some people's view in the comments stream is:
"No bugger that, the life-support systems engineers and co should just 'take responsibility' and produce flawless products. No need for this 3 x backups systems"
The "system" approach is that there is x-rates of failures by having 2 backups we have now reduce the possibility of error by y amount.
Or in the case of production-dbs:
If I were the CEO and the following happens:
CTO-1: "Worker A, has deleted the production DB, I've scolded him, he is sorry and got dock a months pay and is feeling quite bad and has taken full responsibility for his stupid action this probably won't happen again !"
VS
CTO-2:
"Worker A, has deleted the production DB, We Identified that our process/system for allowing dev-machines to access production db's was a terrible idea and oversight, we now have measures abc in place to prevent that in the future"
Yes. CTO-2 is my approach. As the CTO I fucked up because I didn't have that process in place to start with. To buck stops at me.
CTO-2 also has the responsibility of making sure that everyone is educated on this issue and can communicate those issues and worries (fears) to his/her level effectively because prevention is better than cure. Which is my other point.
That's what we're talking about. I hope you don't have direct reports.
Next time be honest "Just shut the conversation down, everyone's a dumbass, I'm right, you're dumb" it'll be quicker than all this back and forth actually trying to get to a stable middle ground :)
The point is that if you take responsibility then you're taking pride in your work, are invested in it and willing to invest in self-improvement and introspection rather than doing the minimum to get to a minimum viable solution. The outcome of this is an increase in quality and a decrease in risk.
In a blame free environment you find the underlying issue and fix it. In a blame full environment you cover up the mistake to avoid being fired and some other person does it again later down the line