These changes affect our perceptions of risk and consequently change behaviours. We see newspaper stories of well-known people lying or asking other people to lie for them, or public figures quoting statistics, changing the subject or blaming somebody else when asked difficult questions. Even the possibility of blame causes behaviour changes. A school is reported to have refused to let children out at playtime when it was icy because staff feared the possibility of an accident on the ice and the school subsequently being held responsible. Practices that have been commonplace for decades are changing as our perceptions of risk change.
Some failures are extremely costly - both in money and in lives.
However, by denying they have been made or by not risking making them in the first place, our ability to learn as a society becomes compromised. Standards do have an 'anti'-learning aspect in that once a standard has been achieved, there is no perceived advantage to improving on it, so continuing learning is tacitly not encouraged. In the main, though, standards are extremely useful to measure and compare performance. A much greater concern is how standards are used. If standards are used to force quality improvements, without there being corresponding changes in resources or structures these changes will threaten the survival of livelihoods and institutions.