The scapegoating happens because the software is the one "tangible" thing in the chain of blame. It's the one thing that can't be queried and reply with "if I had known...".

I do agree with you that Ofsted will likely use the same deflection tactics.

It is a failure of all of the humans involved. Whether it is inadequate acceptance testing, prematurely closed bug reports, optimizing for [unreasonable] timelines, or lack of oversight (and to be clear, I am not advocating for micromanagement).

I feel both of these statements are true: 1) certain people bear more fault than others and 2) developers aren't blameless.

I would like us to reduce our "blame surface area" with a reasonable amount of effort over what we _can_ control.