“When you point at someone there are three fingers pointing back at you.” 

If you’ve ever used this retort while on the receiving end of an accusation, it’s probably resulted in lots more fingers being pointed your way in some sort of slapping motion.

Humans have an absolutely primal aversion to guilt. Those with stronger moral compasses will eventually take due responsibility, but charge anyone with an immediate, red-handed accusation and the raw instinct to lie through their damn teeth to avoid accepting responsibility will be overwhelming. 

Furthermore, there’s something intoxicating about assigning fault to a guilty party (You did this. This bad thing happened because of you!). The accusation provides an unearned catharsis and a false sense of indemnity.

These self-defeating, primitive reactions are exactly why blaming and shaming have no place in the modern office setting. They have been replaced by more collaborative approaches to identifying opportunities for improvement such as retrospective and project sunsets.

Yeah. But, like, everything is on fire right now.

Post-mortems are a great tool to improve future project outcomes, but as the name suggests, they take place after action can be taken to resolve today’s problems. So if you’re trying to put out a growing fire, and it’s regarded as aggressive or unconstructive to assign blame, what can you do to start fixing things? Well, consider asking this question instead: who is responsible for fixing this? 

This phrasing skips culpability and puts the emphasis back on responsibility. It’s a proactive question that keeps the focus on making things right while still assigning an individual to commit to improving the scenario. Speaking as a project manager, I’d rather spend my limited resources on identifying a resolution plan that tags in the folks with the keys for a solution. Sometimes this is the day-to-day team, but it’s often senior managers that were several steps removed from whatever put the project into jeopardy. And yes, sometimes that responsible party is you, so don’t forget to identify the levers you can pull of your own accord.
Asking who is responsible for a solution--either directly or indirectly--signals that you’re moving the team out of the discovery phase, past hand-wringing, and straight into repair mode. It will begin to assuage concerns for affected stakeholders and provide respite for the party in egg on their face. Mistakes happen and sometimes those mistakes have consequences. However, ostracizing and punishment don’t repair sinking ships nearly as well as accountability and resolve.