When organisations punish people for security mistakes, they rarely eliminate the behaviour. Instead, they drive it out of sight. Incidents are quietly fixed, near misses are brushed aside and critical warning signs never reach the teams that could act on them.

The result is not a safer organisation, but a more fragile one. On the surface, everything looks calm. Underneath, unreported breaches, workarounds and vulnerabilities accumulate until something finally breaks in full view.

Blame culture does not harden security, it simply turns real risk into invisible risk.

How Blame Culture Turns Incidents Into Secrets

Most people do not come to work intending to bypass security controls or put data at risk. When something goes wrong, it is usually because of:

  • Conflicting pressures, such as speed versus security

  • Confusing or unusable processes

  • Clever social engineering that exploits human shortcuts

In a blame oriented environment, the focus after an incident is on the individual:

  • Who clicked the link?

  • Who approved the access?

  • Who missed the alert?

The conversation quickly moves toward fault and consequence. People learn that raising their hand leads to embarrassment, career worries or public scrutiny. The rational response is simple: hide the problem, fix what you can and hope nothing else happens.

In other words, blame culture teaches people that silence is safer than transparency.

 

The Security Blind Spots This Creates

Security teams depend on visibility. Tools and telemetry provide part of the picture, but humans still see and feel the earliest warning signs:

  • The slightly odd email that “did not feel right”

  • The vendor portal that behaves strangely after a login

  • The colleague who admits they reused a password elsewhere that was just breached

In a psychologically safe culture, those moments become signals and stories that help the organisation adapt. In a blame culture, they vanish. People close the window, restart their device or ignore the unsettling feeling rather than invite attention.

The consequences are predictable:

  • Incidents are detected later, often when technical signs are already severe

  • Patterns across teams are missed because small issues stay isolated

  • Root causes are repeated, since lessons are never surfaced or shared

From the outside, leadership may see “fewer reported incidents” and mistakenly interpret this as improvement. In reality, blind spots are widening. You are measuring what people are willing to report, not what is actually happening.

 

Psychological Safety As A Security Control

Psychological safety describes a climate in which people feel able to speak up about mistakes, concerns, and ideas without fear of humiliation or unfair punishment. It is often discussed as a people or culture topic. In security, it is also an operational control.

When psychological safety is present:

  • Employees report suspicious activity quickly, even if they think they might have caused it

  • Teams share near misses, so subtle attack patterns are spotted earlier

  • Security becomes a shared responsibility rather than something done by “the security team”

The technical environment does not change, but the flow of information does. The time to detect reduces because people raise issues at the first sign of trouble. Time to contain improves because there is less delay between “something is wrong” and “someone with the right access knows about it”.

A well-tuned SIEM, EDR or SOAR platform is powerful. It is far more powerful when paired with a workforce that feels safe pressing the alarm.

 

From Finger Pointing To Learning: The Just Culture Lens

Moving away from blame does not mean ignoring accountability. It means being precise about the difference between:

  • Human error – unintentional mistakes, slips, lapses

  • At-risk behaviour – shortcuts or workarounds taken under pressure

  • Reckless behaviour – conscious disregard for clear and reasonable rules

A just culture responds differently to each. Human error prompts learning and system improvement. At-risk behaviour prompts coaching and redesign of tasks, tools or incentives. Reckless behaviour still has appropriate consequences.

This distinction matters. If every incident is treated as if it were reckless, people will protect themselves rather than the organisation. If most incidents are treated as learning opportunities, people will help surface the conditions that made the mistake likely in the first place.

The core mindset shift is from “Who is to blame?” to “What made this outcome possible, and how do we reduce the chance of it happening again?”

 

Practical Shifts Leaders Can Make

Blame culture is not usually written into policy. It shows up in how leaders speak, react and design processes. Some practical starting points:

1. Change The Language In Incident Reviews

Replace “Who did this?” with questions such as:

  • What were people trying to achieve at the time?

  • What constraints, pressures or trade-offs were they facing?

  • How did our tools, processes, or environment contribute?

This reframes the conversation from judgment to understanding. Security can still be firm on expectations, but the goal becomes insight and prevention.

2. Reward Early Reporting, Even When It Is Bad News

If someone reports that they clicked a malicious link or approved a suspicious request, the first response should acknowledge the benefit of rapid disclosure. You can still analyse what went wrong later, but the immediate lesson for everyone watching should be clear: reporting quickly is valued.

Celebrating well-handled incidents, not just flawless compliance, sends a powerful cultural signal.

3. Make Near Misses Part Of Security Intelligence

Encourage teams to log and share near misses, such as:

  • Phishing emails that almost worked

  • Access requests that looked unusual but were caught in time

  • Workarounds that people feel forced to use because official processes are slow or confusing

These stories are rich data. They highlight where attackers are investing their effort and where internal friction is pushing people toward risky behaviour. Over time, this creates a feedback loop between front-line experience and security design.

4. Align Policies With Real Work

If policies are unrealistic, outdated or impossible to follow without harming productivity, people will struggle to comply. When they are then punished for inevitable deviations, the blame culture is reinforced.

Involve employees in the design or revision of controls. Test processes in real workflows. The more usable and context-aware your controls are, the less often people will feel the need to hide workarounds.

 

The Bottom Line

Punishing security mistakes might feel decisive in the moment, but it often trades short-term satisfaction for long-term risk. Every time someone decides it is safer to stay quiet than to speak up, the organisation loses a chance to detect, learn and adapt.

Psychological safety is not a soft, optional extra for “culture people”. It is a core requirement for effective detection, response and continuous improvement.

Blame culture creates security blind spots. A psychologically safe culture turns those blind spots into insight, and that insight into resilience.