shared blame
Joint culpability acknowledged
Shared blame is responsibility for a wrong or failure distributed among multiple parties rather than assigned to one.
The phrase implies that no single person or group bears full fault: There's shared blame for the project's collapse—management ignored warnings and the team missed deadlines.
It often appears when assigning accountability would be contentious or when cooperation failed on multiple sides.
- collective guiltBlame assigned to all
- joint responsibilityObligation shared among parties
- pass the buckTransfer responsibility elsewhere
- scapegoatUnfairly blamed person
- finger-pointingAssigning blame openly
casting stones · accountability · complicity · co-conspirators · burden · culpability · sins of omission · cover-up · fallout · reckoning · confession · accusation · deflection · conspiracy · aftermath · scandal · collusion · enablers
- Blamefault, culprit, accusation, guilt-tripping, finger-pointing
shared blameno fault
Absence of culpability
blamelessness · passing the buck · clean hands · plausible deniability
share, shared, shares, sharing, sharer, shareable, unshared, blame, blamed