Just Culture, 2nd Edition

3 Between Culpable and Blameless

When does a mistake stop being honest? There is, as I argued in the previous chapter, no clear a-priori line. It isn't as if it would be patently clear to everybody involved that there is a line that has been crossed, and once it has, the mistake is no longer honest. Rather, it depends very much on how the story of a mistake is told, and who tells it. Here I want to recount one such "mistake," a mistake that got turned into a crime, first a "crime" of sorts by the organization itself, and then by a prosecutor (who, in this particular country, happens to work for the regulator). Who gets to draw the line? Who gets to tell the story? These questions are absolutely critical in understanding how we end up with what ...