Accident Investigations - Tick & Flick? you didn't really cover the effect of lack of time which in my opinion has a great deal to do with "poor" investigation of lower severity incidents (which can then create an ingrained, and often unconscious, attitude/culture of how investigations are approached). Rarely are these lower severity incidents investigated by someone independent to the work, and so someone needs to work overtime to complete the investigation - after all the expectation is to be 100% productive when were on the clock right so the extra time to investigate has to be over and above their normal workload. Which I have seen in a lot of cases end with the injured person taking the blame to reduce the burden on everyone involved (or taking it one step earlier, the infamous non-reporting of incidents). This is generally only made worse with mandates of strict 24 hour / 7 days / etc. timeframes to close out an investigation (and sometimes even the associated corrective actions). No wonder we end up with the bare minimum to pass investigation reports (even if we give them a "good" investigation framework). And as I said this then can effect how higher severity incidents are investigated with the focus ingrained on the process of the investigation rather than the purpose.
But to me the true real killer of "good" investigations is when nothing happens as a result of them (or at least any changes made don't visibly make work better for those affected). I would be interested to know from the forum members the split (gut feeling) between "fighting tooth-and-nail" vs "barely an inconvenience" to close out significant corrective actions that actually have a chance of effecting the root cause of incidents?
Why put the effort into investigating something well, if that effort has a good chance of being wasted? Especially if that effort has to be done over and above your normal workload and you (likely) don't even get any recognition for putting in that effort!
Unfortunately (like the investigations themselves) the scope of what is looked at when trying to imporve investigation techniques tend to focus on the processes and tools rather than any wider root cause organisational factors (ironically).