I’ve started to think that the biggest indication that someone is competent / trustworthy or not is their willingness to take responsibility for stuff going wrong. I get that we’re all a product of our upbringing and society and free will may well be an illusion, but people should still be willing to say “It happened while I was responsible, so it’s my fault and I should have done more to prevent it.”. Even then, in an organization stuff going wrong is more a matter of rules and systems, there should be a system in place that actively makes accidents impossible; but it’s different when you’re literally the person in charge of the organization.

When a companies go bankrupt, a lot of the time CEOs give interviews where they discuss “market conditions”, what’s what this reminds me of.