What is the primary purpose of incident investigations?

• A. To prevent future occurrences
• B. To assign blame
• C. To document for audits
• D. To determine fault quickly

Answer: (A)

The main idea behind conducting incident investigations is to learn from what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. This means digging into the underlying causes and system factors that allowed the incident to occur and identifying corrective actions—such as changes to design, procedures, training, maintenance, or controls—that reduce future risk. The goal is safety improvement, not assigning blame, quickly pinpointing fault, or merely creating audit documentation. While records and audits can be a byproduct of the process, the primary purpose is to make the workplace safer by stopping recurrence.