I don’t think “blameless” and “shared responsibility” are mutually exclusive, in fact, they are two halves to this same coin. The dictionary definition of “blameless” does not encompass the practical application of a “blameless” culture, which can be confusing.
The “blameless” part here means the individual who directly triggered the event is not culpable as long as they acted reasonably and per procedure. The “shared responsibility” part is how the organization views the problem and thus how they approach mitigating for the future.
But when I think of “shared responsibility”, I think of everyone as sharing fault.
When something goes wrong, I think someone, somewhere likely could have mitigated it to some degree. Even if you’re following procedures, you could question the procedure if you don’t fully understand the implications. Sure, that’s a high bar, but I think it’s a preferrable to pointing the finger at the people who wrote the procedures.
On that note, someone or some group being at fault doesn’t necessitate punitive action.
> ... but I think it’s a preferrable to pointing the finger at the people who wrote the procedures ...
It is better to point the finger at the people who wrote the procedures. Their work resulted in a system failure.
If the person doing the work is expected to second guess the procedures, then there was little point having procedures in the first place, and management loses all control of the situation because they can't expect people to follow procedures any more.
Sure the person involved can literally ask questions, but after they ask questions the only option they have is to follow the procedure, so there isn't much they can do to avert problems.
There are always things the engineer all the way up to the CEO could have done prior and could do after to move the company in a positive direction.