I agree completely with the assertion that an excuse is an abdication of responsibility. But what I find is how powerful and successful the excuse is in large corporate IT shops. Steve, a few comments above, captures another frustrating trend where one level of management is looking for a good story to pitch to the next level to further diffuse the blame across more functional areas within IT. The excuse taken to the extreme is what I call being "surprised and confused". I've written more detail about engineers being "surprised and confused" here: http://bit.ly/40gcdI