Is ritualized confession a sign of a bad culture of failure?

That depends a bit on why there are doing it. Mistakes can be painful and costly but they are also a prime learning opportunity. Hence, there are plenty of formal methods of dealing with mistakes and, yes, openness and lack of blame are key ingredients and first steps.

But this should be followed by "what have I/we learned?", "what will I/we doing differently going forward?" and "what specific actions will we take and what specific changes will we implement so this will never occur again?" and creating a plan to track and execute these steps.

Maybe your company does follow a formal process for this, which would explain that it feels "ritualistic". In that case, it would not be a ritual, but everyone just follows the same set of defined steps. I would check with your manager and/or company handbook.

So the key question for me here would be: Does the mistake handling process includes a learning/documentation component that helps others avoid the same mistakes and prevents occurrence of the same or similar issues?

Self-bashing without learning would seem silly to me. One of my managers summed it up like this: "You can make any mistake, but don't make the same mistake twice".

What bothers me slightly is the almost “ritualized” nature of these confessions. It feels like an expectation rather than a spontaneous act...

This is how the team you've joined makes sure everyone is transparent about mistakes. Having this ritual/expectation makes sure everyone participates regardless of their comfort level, otherwise some mistakes might not be surfaced to the team. Sometimes that's fine, but sometimes a mistake has impacts the person who made the mistake isn't aware of.

Also, practice makes perfect, and developing a habit of being open about mistakes and discussing other's mistakes without blame is a good thing. Doing this repeatedly with trivial mistakes makes it easier to do when the mistake is more serious.

Not every mistake is worth a team postmortem, but often only the team knows which mistakes need more discussion and which don't.

I see this as a healthy sign. I think you are overthinking slightly.

Benefits

• The team is made aware of the bug, nobody reads emails about it. So the team would not spend time chasing this bug, thinking it might be in their code.
• The team can learn not to make the mistake again. If they are not doing this, then you should ask what can we learn so as to not repeat the mistake. Emphasis on we not you.
• It difuses the management's blame game. They like finding a culprit to "yell" at.
• It gives advanced warning to support and marketing. If they are not part of it then
  • Include the support, even if its just the support manager
    • Don't include marketing, it's counter-productive. Instead send them a summary be email, with implications and time line to fix.

From my own experince of managing dev team and support for many companies.

the person responsible openly admits the mistake and apologizes. There’s no blaming, and no apparent fear of sanctions

To me, this is the sign of a GREAT culture.

All approaches have their issues, but this approach will have smaller, more reparable ones. Mistakes happen. Punishing mistakes doesn't eradicate mistakes; it causes them to be hidden.

There are some great answers here about using openness of mistakes as part of a culture of group learning and as you've raised the psychological safety which is essential for this approach to work.

What I will add is a note on "ritualism". I've not heard one of these confessions, but rather than ritual, it feels like a convention.

Being open and honest about mistakes can be nerve-wracking, so having a particular phraseology of communicating them helps keep it simple, predictable and calm.

I have run technology teams, taught improv internationally, sung to 100+ seater theatres, I'm no stranger to adrenaline or different communication styles. The idea of openly admitting where I made a mistake and failed, to my peers that were depending on me fills with an anxiety that none of those others do.

This convention feels like a plan to follow that will not only be okay, but welcome is a "set of training wheels for the anxious" that will breed courage and openness until people are more comfortable saying it freestyle.

You've acknowledged that there is no blame and highlighted the psychological safety aspect. That sounds positive, and personally I enjoy those things are my current workplace.

However, if the ritualised aspect creates pressure to confess, that could be unhealthy. It could feel overly intimate, or like unnecessary scrutiny.

That said, as you're relatively new, maybe see how it pans out; the wisdom of it might become apparent over time.

This sounds like a very strange organization to me, which leads to bad culture.

Professional organizations rather focus on finding the cause of the issue and then try to ensure it won't happen again. In general private organizations, this would normally be carried out as per the very wide-spread standard ISO 9000, where any type of quality problem gets registered as a 'deviation'.

You'll have different types of these depending on where they are coming from: internal, customer, supplier etc. The quality department will then make sure that the errand is followed up by the relevant people, that a cause is found and that preventive measures are taken to avoid repeating it in the future. Preventive measures could be education, informing the team, changing routines etc etc.

In order for this system to work at all, everyone needs to trust it and everyone needs to be comfortable with writing a deviation report, so that quality problems found get reported and not ignored.

This means that the focus must always be: what is the cause and how do we prevent it from happening again? Never: who did this, who should we blame. That creates a very bad culture and mistrust in the system. Everyone would stop reporting problems and everyone is afraid to take responsibility of anything, meaning less initiatives and less motivation.

ISO 9000 aside, one of the most fundamental things of management is: give praise loud in public, give criticism discreetly in private. Managers who don't get that very basic rule are bad managers, period.

It's not a sign of a bad culture, but it's a sign that the hierarchy is off track on how to handle failure. Without consequences there is little incentive to be more efficient. It just panders to notions of transparency.

So you'll get petty or even made up failures discussed. While any really important ones will still be hidden by the sort of person who would hide them.

So for an example we have politicians here who seem to be constantly apologising for things that cost a fortune going wrong, or even outright corrupt practices that come to light. But since there's no consequences there's no incentive to 'actually' resolve or prevent these things.