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IN THIS SECTION, YOU WILL: Get a summary of several insights into how professionals in high-pressure environments, such as IT and software engineering, can avoid unfair blame for systemic issues through strategies like clear communication, documentation, and fostering shared accountability.

KEY POINTS:

  • Individuals are often unfairly blamed for systemic failures, such as bugs, system outages, or missed deadlines, driven by complex organizational issues and mismanagement.
  • Fear, insecurity, and poor team dynamics can lead to scapegoating, where one person is targeted to avoid addressing larger organizational problems.
  • Typical scapegoats types include technical experts, newcomers, and high-achievers, who are often blamed due to their visibility, expertise, or isolation in the workplace.
  • Scapegoating can harm mental health, causing stress and burnout, and damage professional reputations, especially in fast-paced and high-pressure tech fields.
  • There are several strategies for avoiding scapegoating, such as setting clear boundaries, documenting work and decisions, fostering open communication, and promoting shared accountability within teams.

In the fast-paced, high-pressure world of IT projects, mistakes or failures in systems, designs, or code can significantly impact projects, organizations, and users. “Scapegoats at Work: Taking the Bull’s-Eye Off Your Back,” by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, offers valuable insights into the toxic scapegoating dynamic that can arise in such environments. The book is a practical guide for professionals who blame themselves unfairly when things go wrong. Crowley and Elster explore the psychology and organizational behaviors that lead to scapegoating while providing people with strategies to protect their professional reputations and thrive despite these challenges. Scapegoating can occur at any level in tech projects, whether you’re a junior developer being blamed for a bug, an architect blamed for system failures, or a team lead dealing with a significant release gone wrong.

IT architects are especially prone to being scapegoated because of the distinct nature of their roles, which positions them in evident and intricate parts of an organization. Their duties frequently involve coordinating across various teams, technologies, and business areas, making them key to a project’s success and crucial in identifying issues when they arise. For instance, a case study by Maija Ylinen and Samuli Pekkola entitled “Enterprise Architecture as a Scapegoat for Difficulties in Public Sector Organizational Transformation” suggests that problems often associated with Enterprise Architecture (EA) do not originate from EA. Instead, they are manifestations of underlying organizational tensions arising from the ambiguous and changing role of the IT department. Rather than causing these tensions, the IT architecture makes them visible, but this visibility can make IT architecture and IT architects target for scapegoating.


What Is Skapegoating?

Scapegoating is the identification―then blaming and punishing―of individuals for problems that rightly belong to the larger organization. Scapegoating involves projecting the unacknowledged or disowned aspects of the group onto the individual and then attacking them. This way, the unnamed can be named, blame “transferred,” and the unacceptable attacked or banished.

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According to Crowley and Elster, scapegoating serves at least four primary functions in organizations:

  • Cohesion can be increased (temporarily) by creating an “in-group” (the “good employees”) and an “out-group” (the scapegoated employees).
  • Expiation relieves the shame and guilt that accompanies error.
  • Intimidation provides control through fear.
  • Distraction provides control through the redirection of attention. These functions can be satisfied consciously or unconsciously. That is, they can be deliberately undertaken or occur out of awareness.

Scapegoating refers to unfairly blaming someone for technical failures such as system outages, performance issues, or missed project deadlines. These problems are often the result of complex, systemic issues like poor project management, insufficient resources, or miscommunication between teams. Yet, a single person or group is targeted as the cause. In a fast-paced tech environment with tight deadlines and costly failures, there is often a rush to assign blame. Leaders may shift responsibility to engineers or IT architects to avoid addressing larger organizational issues, like unrealistic timelines, inadequate resources, or poor decision-making processes.

The psychology behind scapegoating is rooted in team dynamics and human behavior. Teams work collaboratively, so when a problem arises, it can affect multiple areas. In competitive work environments, insecurity and fear can cause managers or teammates to single out an individual to avoid taking responsibility for a larger issue. For example, a junior developer might be blamed for a security breach when the real problem is insufficient code review and testing processes. This scapegoating can take a toll on the mental health of those unfairly blamed, leading to stress, burnout, and decreased confidence in their work.

Scapegoating can take different forms. Top-down scapegoating occurs when managers or leaders shift blame onto developers or teams for issues that are often beyond their control, such as delays caused by unrealistic deadlines. For instance, if a project’s timeline is rushed by management, developers may be blamed for poor-quality code when the real issue is the lack of time allocated for proper testing and debugging. Peer scapegoating can also happen, for instance, when one person is unfairly blamed for a poorly functioning feature, even though the problem stems from unclear requirements or insufficient documentation. Even in Agile environments, where teams are supposed to share responsibility, scapegoating can emerge if the principles of shared accountability are not fully embraced. For example, a failed sprint may lead to one person being blamed when the actual cause was miscommunication or changing requirements.

It is important to note that not wanting to be a scapegoat is not the case against individual accountability. We are all responsible for our actions and for fulfilling or renegotiating our commitments. Employees must have the power and responsibility to complete a task. Scapegoating occurs in situations where there is an illusion of power, that is, in a situation that is impossible for the scapegoated individual to solve.


Types of Scapegoats

Crowley and Elster generally define scapegoats as individuals who people unfairly blame for problems, failures, or issues that are often caused by larger, systemic factors. Various scapegoats can emerge in different contexts, especially in high-pressure work environments.

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General Scapegoat Types

In many organizations, specific individuals take on distinct roles that shape how they interact with the workplace and its challenges. These roles, often involving scapegoating dynamics, reflect deeper psychological and social patterns. Each of these roles highlights the unique ways individuals navigate organizational pressures, sacrifice personal interests, and either challenge or maintain the status quo. Understanding these dynamics offers insight into both individual behavior and broader workplace culture. Crowley and Elster identify the following scapegoat archetypes:

  • The Idealist: The idealist scapegoat pursues principles like fairness, even if it leads to conflict with workplace authorities. They are willing to sacrifice their immediate interests to maintain their integrity and stay true to themselves. Like Jack in this example, idealists are often the “whistle-blowers” in an organization. His strength lies in his courage to speak the unspoken truths. Idealists bring balance to systems by voicing overlooked perspectives. In politics, they are the “loyal opposition,” keeping overzealous or shortsighted policies in check. Historically, groups like the Quakers in 18th-century England embodied this role of “speaking truth to power.” In enlightened workplaces, people value the input of such individuals.

  • The Redeemer: Similar to the idealist, the redeemer also acts on principle and voices unpopular views, even at personal cost. However, unlike the idealist, the redeemer’s primary loyalty is to the organization. They are deeply connected to the organization’s values and committed to its survival, often willing to suffer for its well-being. Redeemers are frequently found in nonprofit or public-interest organizations and in professions like social work, psychiatry, or health care. They take on complex, unpaid work, ultimately accepting blame for the system’s shortcomings. Redeemers serve as the organization’s “toxic handlers,” taking on impossible tasks and shouldering blame, allowing dysfunctional systems to continue operating. Overly conscientious managers sometimes fill this role, sacrificing their interests for the organization’s greater good.

  • The Fall Guy (or Gal): While “fall guys” may appear to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, certain behaviors can make them more susceptible to scapegoating. Often, they are tested through subtle probing. They become more likely to be targeted if they don’t resist these initial tests. Shy employees, like Sally from the previous chapter, are particularly vulnerable. Introversion alone isn’t the cause but how they respond to being singled out. The scapegoating process intensifies if they retreat or show themselves as “easy” targets. While this preserves the organization in the short term, it avoids addressing deeper systemic issues.

  • The Organizational Shadow: The largest and most studied subtype is the organizational shadow. Psychologists use the term “shadow” to describe hidden, undervalued, or unacceptable qualities. These qualities are not always negative, just different from socially preferred ones. In the workplace, scapegoats may be identified by their differences—whether it’s appearance, behavior, or social interactions. Often seen as eccentric or an outsider, this person becomes a convenient target for humor or blame. They may serve as an object lesson to others, symbolizing the consequences of breaking the rules or being too nonconformist. Interestingly, a person can also become a scapegoat by being “too good,” a different side of the redeemer archetype.

  • The Underdog/Top Dog: there’s always an underdog and a top dog in any organization. Formal organizational charts detail power and responsibility; informal hierarchies within teams and offices determine these roles. The underdog’s role is often defined as the top dog, illustrating how these relational dynamics fuel scapegoating in the workplace.

Scapegoats in IT Organizations

Here are some more specific types of scapegoats in IT organizations and the dynamics that often surround them:

The Technical Expert Scapegoat:

  • Description: This person is the most knowledgeable about a particular system, technology, or process. When something goes wrong—like a system outage, code failure, or data breach—they are immediately blamed because they are considered “in charge” or the “expert.”
  • Common Scenario: An IT architect or lead developer is blamed for a system’s failure, even though the root cause is an overextended infrastructure or unaddressed technical debt.
  • Reason for Blame: People often target the expert because they are perceived as being in full control, and others may not understand the technical nuances of the problem. This type of scapegoat is blamed because they are expected to prevent problems with their expertise, regardless of larger issues like lack of resources or impossible deadlines.

The Newcomer Scapegoat:

  • Description: A new employee or someone recently promoted who doesn’t yet have full insight into the organizational culture or processes. They are often blamed for problems that existed long before they arrived or were promoted.
  • Common Scenario: A newly hired developer or IT project manager takes over a problematic project or legacy system and is blamed when things go wrong, even though they inherited an unmanageable situation.
  • Reason for Blame: Newcomers are easy targets because they are not entrenched in the company’s culture, and it’s easier to pin problems on someone who is still learning the ropes rather than addressing the systemic issues that predate them.

The Outsider Scapegoat:

  • Description: This person is often socially or professionally isolated in the workplace. They may work independently or be part of a small, specialized team. Because of their separation from larger groups, they are more vulnerable to being blamed for issues that affect the organization or project.
  • Common Scenario: An external consultant, contractor, or remote worker is blamed for project delays, even though their deliverables were impacted by miscommunication, changes in project scope, or internal team dysfunctions.
  • Reason for Blame: Outsiders are easy scapegoats because they don’t have strong allies within the organization, and their exclusion from informal networks makes them more vulnerable to criticism when things go wrong.

The Underperforming Scapegoat:

  • Description: This is the employee who, for one reason or another, is perceived as weaker or less competent by their peers or superiors. They may not have strong social capital in the team and are, therefore, more easily blamed for group or project failures.
  • Common Scenario: A developer who has struggled with previous tasks is blamed for the failure of a major software release, even though the failure was the result of bad management decisions or unrealistic deadlines.
  • Reason for Blame: Underperformers are often the go-to scapegoats because their previous struggles make it easier to believe they are responsible. Team members and managers may prefer to blame them rather than critically examine how the larger team or processes contributed to the failure.

The High-Achiever Scapegoat:

  • Description: This person is highly competent and excels in their role. However, their strong performance can make them a target for envy or resentment among their peers or managers. Their visibility and success can backfire when things go wrong, making them a convenient target.
  • Common Scenario: A senior software engineer who consistently delivers results is blamed for a failed feature release because they were overseeing a key project component. However, the real issues lie in management’s poor planning and communication.
  • Reason for Blame: High-achievers can become scapegoats because their success makes them stand out. Others may feel envious or threatened and see an opportunity to discredit them when something goes wrong, even if the failure is not their fault.

The Problem-Solver Scapegoat:

  • Description: This individual is often called upon to “clean up” difficult or problematic projects. They’re typically seen as reliable fixers. However, when the scope of the problem exceeds their capacity to fix it, they are blamed for the failure.
  • Common Scenario: An IT project manager is brought in to rescue a troubled project that’s already behind schedule and over budget. When the project eventually fails, the project manager is blamed, even though the original issues existed long before they got involved.
  • Reason for Blame: The problem-solver is often scapegoated because they were brought in specifically to fix something. If they can’t fix it, they’re seen as responsible for the failure, even if it was an impossible task to begin with.

The Loyal Worker Scapegoat:

  • Description: This is the employee who is known for always stepping up, taking on additional tasks, and being loyal to their manager or team. Unfortunately, their willingness to help often leads to being overburdened and eventually blamed when something goes wrong, particularly if they are handling multiple responsibilities.
  • Common Scenario: A software engineer who regularly takes on extra tasks and helps other teams is blamed for a project’s delay when, in reality, they were given too much to manage in too little time.
  • Reason for Blame: Their reputation for reliability makes them a prime target for scapegoating. When a team needs someone to blame, the person who has consistently taken on more work is often seen as the logical (though unfair) choice since their contributions are visible and wide-ranging.

The “In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time” Scapegoat:

  • Description: This type of scapegoat happens to be associated with a project or situation when things go wrong, even if they had little control over or involvement in the actual problem. Their presence at a critical moment makes them the face of the issue.
  • Common Scenario: A mid-level engineer is on call when a major system fails. Despite the failure being the result of a longstanding flaw in the system, they are blamed because they were present when the issue came to light.
  • Reason for Blame: People often look for someone who was “there” when things went wrong. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time makes it easy to shift the blame onto someone simply because they are the most visible person associated with the failure.

The Underrepresented Group Scapegoat:

  • Description: Individuals from underrepresented groups (e.g., women in tech, minorities in corporate environments) are often disproportionately targeted as scapegoats, particularly in environments where they are isolated or marginalized.
  • Common Scenario: A female software engineer in a male-dominated team is blamed for poor team performance, even though the entire team shares responsibility. Her different identity may make her an easier target in a homogenous team.
  • Reason for Blame: Those who are underrepresented in a workplace can become scapegoats due to unconscious biases or the fact that they don’t fit the majority identity. Their differences make them more visible, and they may be unfairly blamed for issues that are collective or systemic.

Recognizing these types of scapegoats can help individuals and teams become more aware of the underlying causes of blame-shifting and avoid perpetuating a toxic culture of unfair blame.


IT Architects as Convenient Scapegoats

IT architects are particularly vulnerable to scapegoating due to the unique nature of their roles, which places them in highly visible and complex positions within organizations. Their responsibilities often span multiple teams, technologies, and business functions, making them both central to project success and convenient targets when things go wrong.

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Here’s why IT architects are especially sensitive to scapegoating:

High Visibility:

  • Architects operate at the center of critical decisions. IT architects are responsible for the high-level design and technical direction of systems, infrastructures, and applications. Because they are often at the forefront of major initiatives—such as system migrations, infrastructure upgrades, or software deployments—their decisions and work are highly visible to both technical teams and leadership.
  • Failure is highly exposed. If an architecture fails or causes delays, even if due to circumstances beyond their control (e.g., poor implementation, resource shortages, or unanticipated business changes), IT architects are often the first to be blamed because they are perceived as owning the system’s design and direction.

“Gluing” Position Between Teams:

  • Architects bridge multiple teams and departments. IT architects typically work across various departments—engineering, operations, security, and business teams—ensuring that systems are integrated and that architectural designs align with business goals. This “gluing” role means that they often have partial control over different moving parts of a project but are not fully in charge of any one aspect.
  • Dependence on other teams for success. Because their role spans so many different teams, they rely heavily on the work of others to implement the architecture. For instance, they might design a scalable cloud solution, but if the development or operations teams don’t implement it properly or adhere to the design, failures can occur. Even though these failures may be out of the architect’s hands, they are often blamed since they sit at the center of the system’s overall design.
  • Lack of control over execution. Architects guide the “what” and “why” of system design but do not typically manage the “how” or the detailed execution. This gap can lead to misalignments between design and implementation, where architects are held accountable for failures rooted in execution rather than design itself.

Vague Scope of Work:

  • Architectural work is abstract and often misunderstood. The scope of an IT architect’s work tends to be high-level and conceptual, involving system design, integration planning, and future-proofing. This often makes their contributions harder to quantify compared to the more concrete outputs of developers or operations teams. As a result, when problems arise, it’s easy for others to point fingers at the architect’s “design flaws” rather than recognizing the operational or implementation challenges.
  • Complexity increases ambiguity. The work of IT architects often involves managing multiple complex systems, anticipating future business needs, and creating scalable, flexible designs. The broader and more complex the architecture, the more room there is for things to go wrong in unexpected ways. This can make it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of failures, and the architect’s position in designing the system makes them an easy target when it’s unclear who is responsible.
  • Unclear boundaries of accountability. The abstract nature of architectural design can blur accountability lines, especially in large organizations. If a failure occurs, it’s not always clear whether it was due to poor planning, communication gaps, or misalignment in execution. Since architects are involved in so many aspects of a project but often don’t “own” the direct outcomes, this lack of clear accountability can make them scapegoats when it’s easier to blame design than to investigate deeper issues in execution or management.

Perceived Ownership of Strategic Failures:

  • Architects are seen as responsible for long-term technical strategy. IT architects are not just involved in the immediate implementation of systems but also in ensuring that systems are built to scale and adapt to future needs. When these long-term strategies fail—whether due to changing business requirements, unforeseen technical challenges, or shifts in the market—architects are often blamed for failing to predict or mitigate risks, even though they can’t control every variable.
  • Strategic projects often carry higher risk. Architects tend to lead high-stakes, strategic projects like system overhauls, cloud migrations, or building new service-oriented architectures. These projects have a lot of visibility, budgetary focus, and pressure from stakeholders. If the project underperforms, fails to meet deadlines, or goes over budget, it’s common for architects to be blamed for poor strategic decisions, even when the root cause might be organizational or due to poor resource management.

Balancing Business and Technical Expectations:

  • Architects are caught between business goals and technical realities. IT architects often find themselves trying to reconcile business expectations (e.g., cost reductions, faster delivery times) with the technical limitations of systems or the realistic capacity of development teams. When systems fail to deliver the expected business outcomes, architects are sometimes blamed for not designing solutions that perfectly match the business’s needs or for not adequately communicating the technical risks to leadership.
  • Pressure from multiple stakeholders. As the “glue” between business and technical teams, architects often face conflicting pressures. Business leaders may push for faster delivery and more features, while development teams may highlight resource constraints and technical debt. Navigating these pressures is difficult, and if the system doesn’t meet all stakeholder expectations, architects can become scapegoats because they are the ones attempting to balance these competing demands.

Technical Debt and Long-term Blame:

  • Long-term implications of architectural decisions. Many architectural decisions have long-lasting implications. Architects may design systems that perform well initially but accumulate technical debt over time as new features are added, or as the system grows beyond its original scope. When systems start to degrade or become difficult to maintain, architects are often blamed for making poor decisions in the past, even though those decisions were appropriate for the original context.
  • Retrospective blame for decisions made under constraints. Architects frequently make decisions based on the constraints they face at the time—limited budget, tight deadlines, or resource shortages. Over time, those decisions may appear flawed as new challenges emerge. This “retrospective scapegoating” occurs when architects are blamed for making choices that seemed reasonable given the information and resources they had, but that later turned out to have unforeseen consequences.

The work of IT architects is critical to the success of many projects, but the complexity and scope of what they do can make them easy targets when things go wrong. This sensitivity to scapegoating highlights the importance of architects managing expectations, documenting decisions, and fostering open communication to mitigate blame and ensure shared accountability across teams and leadership.


Breaking the Cycle

Scapegoating is a form of bullying, and there are several ways to cope with bullying. Most of us have had firsthand experience as kids at having been picked on and have probably used one or more of the following strategies:

  • Confrontation means holding your ground in the face of attempts to bully you. Sometimes, this involves fighting back. The key to this strategy is to win or lose, not allow the bully to observe your pain, and, above all, do not beg or plead for mercy.

  • Make alliances with others, as there is power in numbers, or at least in a few large friends. In this scenario, the allies directly confront the bully. Since bullying almost always occurs with an audience, there is another, more indirect way that alliances can help. Suppose enough bystanders are persuaded to protest the bullying. In that case, the bully is deprived of the attention and increased group status (even if it is achieved by inspiring fear) that reinforces such behavior. Many of the successful antibullying programs in schools make use of this strategy.

  • Increase the cost to the bully-make the difference between the satisfactions available from bullying and the expenses incurred from bullying smaller. This approach might mean fighting back directly or indirectly, not giving the bully the satisfaction of your tears or pleas, or in some other way letting the bully know that s/he needs to pick on a different target. This strategy might involve appealing to upper management, government regulatory agencies, or the legal system in the workplace.

To break the cycle of scapegoating in tech teams, IT professionals can take several steps to protect themselves. First, thorough documentation is essential. By keeping detailed records of their work, from project requirements to code changes, software engineers and architects can provide transparency and evidence of their contributions, making it harder for others to blame them unfairly. Regular peer validation also help foster a collaborative environment where the entire team shares responsibility for the quality of the code, making it more difficult for one person to be singled out when something goes wrong. Effective communication of technical challenges and risks is another key strategy. For instance, if an IT architect highlights that a system is being rushed to production without proper testing, it shifts the focus to the team and management’s decision-making rather than leaving one individual to take the blame if something goes wrong.

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Managing scapegoating colleagues or managers requires proactive measures. Constructive feedback loops and accountability tools, such as formal incident reviews or postmortems, can ensure that project failures are addressed comprehensively rather than being attributed to a single person. Rather than blaming individuals, these reviews should focus on systemic improvement.

Fostering a blame-free culture in tech teams is critical to breaking scapegoating patterns. Postmortems and incident reviews focusing on root cause analysis are key tools in this effort. By examining failures as a result of multiple factors—such as unclear requirements, misconfigured environments, or lack of sufficient testing—teams can move away from a blame culture. In DevOps environments, shared accountability is a central principle, with developers and operations teams jointly responsible for the success or failure of a system release. This kind of culture promotes collaboration and prevents finger-pointing.

Reclaiming their role and career path is essential for IT professionals who find themselves in scapegoating-prone environments. By consistently demonstrating competence, communicating risks early, and actively contributing to team problem-solving, engineers and architects can shift the narrative from potential scapegoats to valuable team members. Building a strong support network within the team, across departments, or in the wider tech community can protect scapegoating. Relationships with mentors, peers, and industry contacts offer advice, feedback, and advocacy in situations where unfair treatment occurs. If scapegoating becomes a chronic issue, it may be necessary to consider moving to a more supportive work environment where collaboration and accountability are prioritized.

To prevent or recover from scapegoating, especially in roles like IT professionals, it is essential to use proactive and reactive strategies that help manage perceptions, set boundaries, and establish accountability. Here are key techniques:

Clear Communication

  • Proactively communicate risks and constraints: IT architects and engineers should clearly outline technical risks, limitations, and assumptions when proposing designs or solutions. Communicating potential risks early on shifts the focus from failure to collective responsibility for managing those risks.
  • Keep stakeholders informed: Frequent updates on project progress, challenges, and dependencies help ensure everyone knows of obstacles and delays before they escalate into bigger issues. Keeping communication lines open reduces the chances of being blindsided by blame when problems arise.
  • Set realistic expectations: Avoid promising more than what is feasible within time, budget, or resource constraints. Communicating realistic timelines, deliverables, and outcomes will prevent misunderstandings and minimize the risk of being blamed for unmet expectations.

Documentation

  • Maintain detailed documentation: Record all key decisions, conversations, designs, and project milestones. When changes are made, document why they were necessary and who approved them. This paper trail protects you in the event of disputes and ensures that everyone knows the context for decisions.
  • Track decision history: Record the reasoning behind technical or architectural decisions, especially when they involve trade-offs or risks. If issues arise later,you’lll have a clear rationale for why certain choices were made.
  • Document responsibility: Ensure that everyone is roles and responsibilities are clearly documented. This documentation prevents a situation where someone can deflect blame onto you for areas outside your control.

Boundary Setting

  • Define your scope of responsibility: Make sure everyone understands the boundaries of your role. If you are an architect, emphasize that while you’re responsible for system design, others are responsible for execution, implementation, or maintenance. This setting will help prevent you from being blamed for issues outside your control.
  • Push back against unrealistic demands: If asked to take on additional tasks that could stretch your capacity or lead to lower quality work, it’s important to push back diplomatically. Explain the impact these requests may have on deliverables and timelines to manage expectations.
  • Say no vague tasks: If you are assigned a vague or ill-defined task, seek clarification and clear objectives before proceeding. This resistance reduces the chance of being blamed for unclear or misunderstood expectations later on.

Promote Accountability and Collaboration

  • Encourage team accountability: Foster a culture where everyone takes collective responsibility for project success. This culture factor reduces the likelihood of one individual being unfairly blamed for broader team failures. For example, use blameless postmortems to analyze failures as team-wide issues rather than focusing on individual faults.
  • Involve others in key decisions: Don’t make major architectural or technical decisions in isolation. Involve relevant stakeholders, including managers and developers, in decision-making processes. By making the decision-making process transparent, you ensure shared accountability for both the outcomes and any potential issues.
  • Leverage cross-functional teams: When everyone has a stake in the project is success, it becomes harder for any one person to be scapegoated. Cross-functional teams encourage collaboration across different roles, reducing the chances of finger-pointing.

Blameless Postmortems

  • Focus on system improvement, not blame: After an incident or project failure, conduct a postmortem analysis focusing on identifying root causes and learning from mistakes rather than blaming individuals. This method encourages a culture of learning and improvement rather than blame.
  • Root cause analysis: Use techniques like root cause analysis to identify the deeper, systemic reasons for failures. This analysis helps prevent a superficial response where one person is blamed for a complex issue.
  • Document lessons learned: Make sure all lessons learned from the postmortem are documented and shared across teams. This lessons prevents future failures and provides a concrete record that shows you are committed to improving the system rather than deflecting blame.

Emotional Resilience and Self-Reflection

  • Stay calm in the face of blame: When scapegoating occurs, it can be tempting to react defensively. However, maintaining emotional control and responding calmly can prevent escalating situations. It also helps you project professionalism and confidence, reducing the perception that you are at fault.
  • Don’t internalize the blame: Recognize that scapegoating is often more about organizational dynamics than personal failure. Reflect on the situation objectively to determine if there was anything you could have done differently, butdon’tt internalize unfair blame.
  • Seek support: Building a network of allies and mentors can provide valuable perspective and advice. If you’re scapegoated, these relationships can help validate your experiences and offer guidance on how to recover.

Reputation Management

  • Build a strong professional reputation: Consistently deliver high-quality work and communicate your successes. A strong reputation for competence and reliability makes it harder for others to scapegoat you. Make sure that key stakeholders recognize your contributions to successful projects.
  • Highlight your contributions publicly: make sure your contributions are visible without overdoing it. When projects succeed, ensure your role is acknowledged by providing clear reports or summaries highlighting your contributions to management and stakeholders.
  • Own your mistakes, but clarify the broader context: Ifyou’vee made a mistake, own up to it. However, it provides a broader context to show that mistakes are rarely caused by one person alone and usually result from multiple factors, such as resource limitations, timeline pressure, or organizational processes.

Develop a Support Network

  • Build allies within your organization: Strong relationships with peers, managers, and stakeholders help protect you from being unfairly blamed. When others know and trust your work, they’re more likely to defend you if you’re targeted as a scapegoat.
  • Find a mentor: A mentor can provide valuable perspective on difficult situations and help you navigate organizational politics. They can also serve as a sounding board for ideas and guide how to manage difficult dynamics, such as scapegoating.
  • Seek third-party validation: Ifyou’ree being unfairly blamed, a trusted colleague or manager can help defend you or provide an unbiased perspective to management, showing that the problem was more complex than it first appeared.

Prepare for Leadership Conversations

  • Anticipate criticism: If you sense thatyou’ree being set up as a scapegoat, prepare for conversations with leadership by gathering data and evidence that clarifies the true nature of the issue. Be ready to present alternative explanations or point to the systemic causes that contributed to the problem.
  • Be diplomatic, not defensive: When confronted with blame, respond diplomatically. Avoid appearing defensive, as this can make you seem guilty. Instead, acknowledge the issue and use data and evidence to explain the broader context and what can be done to prevent similar problems in the future.
  • Redirect focus to solutions: Shift the conversation away from blame and toward solutions. For example, if you are blamed for a system failure, emphasize how you plan to address the issue, improve the architecture, or collaborate with other teams to prevent future failures.

Know When to Move On

  • Recognize chronic scapegoating: If scapegoating becomes a recurring pattern and leadership refuses to address it, it may be time to evaluate whether the organization fits your career growth. Some workplace cultures are toxic, and staying in a scapegoating-prone environment can be detrimental to your mental health and career.
  • Explore healthier work environments: Look for organizations that foster collaboration, shared accountability, and open communication. In such environments, blame is less likely to be concentrated on one person, and there is a greater focus on improving systems rather than assigning fault.

Preventing or recovering from scapegoating requires proactive communication, documentation, boundary setting, and promoting shared accountability. IT architects and software engineers can protect themselves from being unfairly targeted by managing expectations, building strong networks, and emphasizing solutions over blame. Additionally, emotional resilience and self-reflection are key tools in maintaining confidence and perspective in high-pressure situations where scapegoating might arise.


Examples of Scapegoating Situations in IT Organizations

Scapegoating can severely damage a career. However, with the right strategies, software engineers and IT architects can avoid being unfairly targeted, maintain transparency, and protect their professional integrity even in challenging work environments.

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Here are additional examples from the world of IT that illustrate how scapegoating can occur and how the strategies from Scapegoats at Work can be applied.

Architectural Decisions Gone Wrong:

  • Scenario: An IT architect designs a complex microservices architecture for a large-scale web application. As the project progresses, integration problems arise, and the system experiences frequent downtime. The engineering manager singles out the architect for making “poor design choices,” ignoring that the issues stem from a lack of communication between different teams and incomplete design implementation due to resource constraints.
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: Here, the architect is unfairly blamed for failures that result from broader organizational problems, such as insufficient resources or misalignment between development and operations teams. Scapegoating often occurs because the complexity of system architecture makes it easy to focus on one person’s decisions rather than examining the wider context.
  • Solution: The authors recommend that the architect document the decision-making process throughout the project. Keeping records of conversations, resource constraints, and alternative solutions that were considered will demonstrate that the design was sound given the context. In addition, setting clear expectations and boundaries upfront—by ensuring everyone understands the limitations of the design given the resources—would help mitigate future scapegoating.

Failed Cloud Migration:

  • Scenario: A company undertakes a cloud migration to modernize its infrastructure. The IT team migrates several legacy applications to the cloud, but performance suffers, and downtime increases, causing the company to lose customers. The head of IT blames the cloud engineer responsible for leading the migration, stating that they “didn’t understand the complexity” of the legacy systems.
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: In this case, the engineer becomes the scapegoat, despite the fact that the decision to migrate was made without proper research, planning, or understanding of the company’s legacy systems. Management’s rush to modernize undermined the engineer’s technical expertise without considering the challenges.
  • Solution: Crowley and Elster would suggest using effective communication early on to flag potential risks. If the cloud engineer had documented and communicated these risks—such as performance issues, dependencies on outdated systems, or challenges in integrating the legacy architecture—before the migration, they could have shifted the focus to the broader challenges of the project. This transparency would clarify that the issues were systemic rather than due to a single individual’s failure.

Unrealistic Project Timelines:

  • Scenario: A software engineering team is given an impossible deadline to deliver a new feature. The pressure leads the team to take shortcuts in coding, testing, and documentation. When the feature launches, it’s riddled with bugs, causing outages for key customers. The CTO blames the lead developer, arguing that they should have “worked harder” or “flagged issues sooner,” despite the unrealistic timeline.
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: This is a classic example of top-down scapegoating, where leadership assigns blame to someone lower in the hierarchy to deflect criticism away from poor management decisions. The lead developer is blamed for not doing enough to meet an impossible deadline, when the true issue was poor planning and a lack of resources.
  • Solution: Crowley and Elster would advocate for setting realistic expectations from the outset. The lead developer should document the potential risks of rushing the feature, highlight areas where the quality might suffer, and provide alternative timelines based on what the team can realistically deliver. This way, if the project fails, there’s a documented trail showing that the real issue was the timeline, not the team’s performance. Conducting blameless retrospectives after the project would help the team analyze what went wrong without singling out individuals.

Security Breach and Blame-Shifting:

  • Scenario: A cybersecurity breach occurs in a large financial organization due to a vulnerability in one of the applications. The security team had warned about the vulnerability, but the development team was pushed to release the application without a proper security review due to a tight deadline. After the breach, upper management blamed the security team for “failing to catch” the vulnerability, even though the decision to launch was made despite their warnings.
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: The security team becomes the scapegoat, even though they did their job by raising the alarm about the vulnerability. However, leadership blames them to avoid scrutiny on the rushed release and the prioritization of speed over security.
  • Solution: In this situation, Crowley and Elster would recommend boundary-setting by the security team. They should have created clear documentation and formalized their concerns with leadership, perhaps requesting sign-offs on known risks. This way, when the breach occurred, it would be clear that management decided to move forward despite the warnings. Implementing postmortems focused on understanding how decisions were made and how to improve the process (e.g., never skipping security reviews) would help avoid scapegoating and encourage more responsible decision-making in the future.

Legacy System Maintenance Issues:

  • Scenario: A software engineer is responsible for maintaining a legacy system that is critical to the business. Due to outdated technology, the system frequently goes down, but leadership refuses to invest in upgrading or replacing it. When another outage occurs, the engineer is blamed for not “keeping the system running smoothly.”
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: The engineer is scapegoated for issues that directly result from management’s unwillingness to invest in modernizing the system. This type of scapegoating occurs frequently when long-standing technical debt is ignored by leadership, and individuals responsible for legacy systems are unfairly blamed for inevitable failures.
  • Solution: Crowley and Elster would recommend managing expectations and transparency by consistently communicating the risks of relying on outdated technology. The engineer should regularly document the system’s limitations, advocate for modernization, and ensure that leadership understands the risks of not addressing technical debt. By continuously presenting data on system failures and potential solutions, the engineer can shift the focus to the broader problem rather than being scapegoated when the system fails.

The Software Bug Blame Game:

  • Scenario: A development team releases a new version of an application. Shortly after deployment, users begin experiencing major issues—frequent crashes, data corruption, and slow performance. Under pressure from upper management, the product owner quickly points fingers at a specific developer, claiming their code introduced the critical bug. The developer is scapegoated, even though the root cause is rushed development, insufficient testing, and outdated infrastructure.
  • Scapegoating Dynamic: In this situation, the developer becomes the easy target, especially if they were involved in the final touches of the code. The blame deflects attention from the poor planning and tight deadlines that led to cutting corners during testing.
  • Solution: Crowley and Elster’s approach would be to focus on system improvements rather than individual blame. Implementing blameless postmortems would allow the team to conduct a root cause analysis, where it becomes clear that the real issue was inadequate testing, poor code review processes, and tight timelines. By promoting a culture of shared responsibility, everyone involved can learn from the mistake without pinning the blame on one person.

Scapegoating in IT organizations can arise from systemic issues like poor planning, miscommunication, technical debt, or unrealistic expectations. The strategies from Scapegoats at Work—such as documentation, setting boundaries, clear communication, and fostering shared accountability—can help IT professionals avoid becoming unfair targets when projects go wrong. By focusing on systemic improvement and transparency, engineers and architects can protect their professional reputations and ensure that failures lead to learning rather than blame.


To Probe Further


Questions to Consider

  • Have you ever experienced or witnessed scapegoating in your workplace? What were the circumstances, and how was the blame assigned?
  • How do you currently document your work and decisions to protect yourself from unfair blame? What improvements could you make?
  • In what ways do team dynamics or organizational structures in your current role contribute to or prevent scapegoating?
  • When mistakes happen in your team, how is accountability typically managed? Is there a focus on shared responsibility or individual blame?
  • How can you foster a culture of transparency and collective accountability in your work environment to reduce the risk of scapegoating?
  • Have you ever been in a position where setting clearer boundaries might have prevented scapegoating? How can you apply this lesson moving forward?
  • What strategies resonate most with your current work challenges, and how can you implement them to improve your professional resilience?
  • How do you handle communication when discussing risks or challenges with management? Are there ways to be more proactive in managing expectations?
  • Can you identify any systemic issues in your organization that are frequently blamed on individuals? How can you help shift the focus to addressing these larger issues?
  • How does your organization handle postmortems or incident reviews? Are they blame-free, and if not, how could you encourage a shift toward systemic improvement rather than individual fault-finding?
Appendix 2: Tools for Developing Soft Skills
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Appendix 3: Pragmatic Knowledge Resources
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