ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the blame in professional practice, which invariably are linked with situations of risk, accident, or just problematic consequences in which professional practice is implicated. It argues that when bad things happens involving professionals, typical first responses tend to include blame and processes of attribution, even escalating to scapegoating. Openness and transparency appear to be perfectly reasonable demands given professions social contract with the public; that is, trust in exchange for guarantee of quality service. Garsten and de Montaya suggest that an important question is how transparency is mediated. There may need to be different layers of transparency depending on the extent of negotiation with external stakeholders over criteria and thresholds, or the extent of critical questioning of definitions and even values and goals of the transparency process. Apology is the supreme symbolic admission, the iconic redemptor of blame produced through processes of transparency, whether through whistleblowing, audit or a 'duty of candour'.
