[sokoloff]

In general, I want to understand what happened and since most issues have a human component, that often means understanding which human under-performed, how and, ideally, why.

In that sense, I want us to understand where the responsibility for the failure (aka the blame) lies. That’s different from punishing based on any single incident.

You absolutely can have blame without punishment.

[_carbyau_]

The issue is that human interactions are largely based on reputation. If a person is blamed, immediately their reputation suffers. Hence blame=punishment.

As mentioned in other comments, if you are close enough to know and understand then qualifying facts may remove the reputational damage in your mind, and you may fully trust that person to do similar work in future.

But in society wide incidents few of us are that close to the event of concern.