When I was in college long ago, I dated an engineering student. I remember telling my mother at the end of the semester that he had gotten a D in his differential equations class.
"Does he know what he did wrong?" she asked.
I told her he had no idea why he'd gotten the grade.
"That's too bad," she noted. "He won't be able to fix it if he doesn't know."
People don't like admitting their mistakes. It's easy to assign an external factor to failure -- the teacher hates me, the instructions were too difficult. But without admitting mistakes, one can't work out the solution.
Sometimes mistakes can be catastrophic. A few days ago, something caused a deadly crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in Ethiopia, the second such crash with a 737 MAX 8 in six months. Several countries' airlines have quit flying the model in the belief that a mechanical failure took down the craft. One of the holdouts, and the country that flies the most 737 MAX 8 aircraft, is the US. One hopes that the US isn't trying to cover up a catastrophic mistake by an American company with false confidence.
We have a crisis of responsibility in leadership because of the inability of people to admit making mistakes. Politicians pass blame to others or make equivocal statements: "Mistakes were made." They fear that taking responsibility for mistakes will alarm the electorate, who don't like admitting their own mistakes. This leads to the crisis -- taking responsibility for mistakes is the sign of a true leader, one who is willing to learn for the sake of her constituents, yet leaders present themselves with a flawless facade for the sake of electability.
We need to admit our mistakes to learn from them, to fix them, to grow and to become wise.
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