Blame is a thief

NASA discovered this the hard way after the Columbia disaster. Their post-incident investigation didn't point to a single technical failure.

Instead it pointed to a culture in which people had learned not to raise concerns. Warnings were issued, yet they'd been dismissed. 

When something goes wrong, the first question a blame culture asks is ‘who?’ and in doing so, it permanently prevents the more useful question, which is ‘why?’

Research has consistently demonstrated that teams in psychologically safe environments - where failure is treated as data to be learned from, rather than evidence of guilt - significantly outperform those where it isn't. 

Interestingly, the fear of being blamed doesn't make people more careful. It makes them more careful about being caught.

The damage it causes runs deeper than morale. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that blame-oriented cultures increase employee disengagement, reduce information sharing, and stifles the collaboration and innovation that most organisations claim to want.

And yet, when something fails, some still look to the point the finger.

If you want a culture that learns, grows and improves you need to make it OK to be wrong every now and then. Blame will steal that from you.