Inhumanity of Root Cause Analysis

This pops up every few years, and I generally have the same counterarguments to RCA's detractors.

RCA isn't about placing blame, and just changing the name to Faultless Learning Review doesn't change the fact you're doing Root Cause Analysis.

The idea in all cases is to enumerate the contributory factors in the breakage, and avoid doing that again.

It isn't some scapegoat mechanism; any business has turnover, so the same mistakes are likely to occur over and over again until the principle actors have the requisite experience ingrained in their day to day. Process helps; but process alone doesn't make success. It's when process and those implementing it are on the same page that the rubber meets the road. That getting on the same page is the entire reason for RCA.

As someone who has been the primary investigator on outages or complications for a handful of companies; very rarely does the "who" involved with an RCA even come into the matter. Everyone just wants the problem not to happen again more than anything else.