They say success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. It wasn’t one Volkswagen executive who thought to install illicit software into diesel motor vehicles. It wasn’t one engineer or shop floor worker. It was the brainchild of several, perpetrated and concealed by many. When the Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal broke in 2015, however, no one at the German automaker stood up to accept culpability.

Aly McDevitt is Data & Research Journalist at Compliance Week. She has a background in education and college consulting. Prior to teaching, she was an editor/author at Thomson Reuters, where she reported...