I'm thinking about the times when I've been involved in a software deployment gone awry. In highly-politicized companies, everyone points their fingers at some

I'm thinking about the times when I've been involved in a software deployment gone awry. In highly-politicized companies, everyone points their fingers at some other person/group. "If they had configured the database properly...." Nobody's taking even partial blame, so forget about apologies. In most cases, everybody's at fault in some way, so everybody ought to be taking blame for something. However, if one group does the "right" thing and admits a failure, the other groups seize the opportunity to exonerate themselves at the honest group's expense. So, nobody wants to be the first to flinch. How can cultures change so that the self-aware are rewarded for honesty and those in convenient denial are punished?