亲爱的安妮：您曾写过一篇关于如何走出失败阴影的文章，其中建议对于错误要用于承担责任。我的上司却从来不会这样。相反，尤其是在他与公司高层报告的时候，他总是把我们的成功归结到他一个人身上，却把不太顺利的事情都推卸给我和我的八位同事。

    人无完人，但由于我那个上司的错误或疏忽导致出现问题的情况已经有很多次，代人受过让我很愤怒。我担心这会影响到我在公司的声誉。下一次我的上司因为他做过（或没做过）某件事来责备我们的时候，我们应该如何应对？有没有什么高明的方法，可以越过他把问题澄清，还是说这无异于是一种政治上的自杀行为？——J.J.

亲爱的J.J.：你不知道有多少人最近给我写信抱怨同样的情形——你应该会想象得到。本•达特纳发现：“在职场上，一旦某件事出了差错，人们会把更多的精力用于相互指责，而不是努力找出解决方案，这样的情况太常见了。”他补充道，经济衰退加剧了这个问题，所以现在转嫁责任的做法比以前更要普遍。“看看华盛顿就知道了。连政府都关门了，而国会依然在为谁是谁非争论不休。”

    达特纳是一位组织心理学家和顾问，曾写过一本书，名为《责备游戏：荣誉潜规则和责备如何决定我们的成败》（ The Blame Game: How the Hidden Rules of Credit and Blame Determine Our Success or Failure）。关于你的上司经常把你推下火坑这件事，不知道你是否与他交流过，如果还没有，现在是时候了。达特纳表示：“直接与他对质会有风险，但沉默和逆来顺受同样有风险。”

    关键是如何发起对话。达特纳建议，问一些具体的问题，比如你的上司为什么认为错误是别人造成的。跟他讨论出问题的细节，以此迫使他停止诬陷——当然要以平静、而不是责难的方式。这会让他意识到，你已经受够了继续做他的替罪羊，你希望在未来阻止这样的事情再次发生。你还可能了解到一些有用的东西，比如他如何看待你的角色和他的职责。

    达特纳说：“尽量弄清楚事情的真相。”比如，有没有可能是因为在最开始，大家并没有明确谁应该负责某个项目的哪个部分，所以你的上司真的以为是你和你的同事犯了错误？“我遇到过人们犯的最大的错误，是非常愤怒地对这种情况做出反应，而并没有首先了解事实的真相。”

    员工安置公司OfficeTeam执行董事罗伯特•霍斯金同意达特纳的观点。他说：“必须弄清楚，到底是什么使你因为某个问题而受到责备。之后再去讨论如何防止同样的事情再次发生。”

    霍斯金表示，防止未来被嫁祸的一种方法是，开始记录你和同事做的每一件事。他说：“通常情况下，人们太忙了，忽视、错过了许多事情。所以在每一个项目开始之前，用书面方式列出每个人的职责，同时确保所有人，包括上司本人在内，人手一份，并在上面签字。”详细的责任分配甚至可以防止错误的发生。

Dear Annie: Your column on how to recover from a failure recommended accepting the responsibility for what's gone wrong. I report to a boss who never does that. Instead, and especially when he's talking to higher-ups in the company, he hogs all the credit for our successes, while pointing the finger at me or at one of my eight teammates for things that haven't gone so well.

    Nobody's perfect, but there have been times when problems arose because of mistakes or oversights on this manager's part, and I resent taking the fall. I also worry about what this is doing to my reputation here. Next time our boss blames one of us for something he did (or didn't do), how should we respond? Is there a diplomatic way to go over his head and set the record straight, or would that be a political suicide mission? -- Just Jason

Dear J.J.: You wouldn't believe how many people have written to me recently to complain about that situation -- or, then again, maybe you would. "In too many workplaces, when something goes wrong, people waste far more time and energy assigning blame for it than trying to find a solution," observes Ben Dattner, adding that the recession exacerbated the problem, so that finger-pointing is now more widespread than ever. "Just look at Washington. The government is shut down, and Congress is still bickering over whose fault it is."

    An organizational psychologist and consultant, Dattner wrote a book called The Blame Game: How the Hidden Rules of Credit and Blame Determine Our Success or Failure. You don't mention whether you've ever talked with your boss about his habit of throwing you under the bus but, if not, it's time to start. "Confronting him is risky, but saying nothing and letting this go on is risky too," Dattner notes.

    The key is in how you approach the conversation. Dattner suggests asking lots of questions about exactly why your boss believes a mistake was someone else's fault. Pinning him down on the details -- in a calm, non-accusatory way, of course -- will put him on notice that you're tired of being a scapegoat and you want to prevent it in the future. You may also learn something useful about how he perceives your role, and his own.

    "Try to get to the bottom of what's really going on here," Dattner advises. Is it possible, for instance, that who was accountable for which parts of a given project wasn't clear at the outset, so your boss genuinely believes you or a teammate dropped the ball? "The biggest mistake I've seen people make is reacting to a situation, usually angrily, without really understanding it first."

    Robert Hosking, executive director of staffing company OfficeTeam, agrees. "You need to know exactly how the blame for a problem got assigned to you," he says. "Then steer the discussion toward how to prevent the same thing from happening again."

    One way to head off future finger-pointing, Hosking says, is to start documenting everything you and your teammates do. "Often everyone is so busy that things get overlooked or slip through the cracks," he says. "So begin each project with a written outline of who is responsible for what, and make sure everyone, including the boss, has a copy and signs off on it." Detailed accountability might even prevent mistakes from happening in the first place.