When investigating accidents and failures, professionals seek to find cause. This is a different concept than finding fault. Causes are factual, faults are personal. Exercising the separation between these two items is critical to creating progress.

Good leaders avoid playing the blame game, and even when individuals have a direct action in a root cause, they work to highlight failures in process, knowledge, or experience and not a failures of character.

It takes more effort to operate this way, and sometimes we have to challenge our own reactions and emotions. The impact is greater, especially when learning from challenges.