[teekert]

"Hmmm, seems like a lot of people involved in this case should be fired,"

Perhaps, or a culture should be created where there should be no fear of negative repercussions for taking ownership of something? Seems like a typical organizational thing where responsibilities are not clear and people are afraid to take it.

Edit, not saying this is not unforgivable. Just saying a critical look at the organizational level would be good.

[jjk166]

And the key to creating such a culture is to make the consequences of hiding mistakes substantially worse than the consequences of owning them. So either you reward people for making mistakes and coming forward (creating a perverse incentive to make mistakes) or you punish those who hide mistakes especially hard. Bonus points if in the process of punishing people who hide mistakes, you also remove those people from the organization, thus increasing the proportion of people in the organization who do not hide mistakes.

Firing these people is both just and pragmatic.