Ireland is currently coming to the consideration of profound derelictions of duty of a number of people, including and particularly, leading politicians.
The generalized defence coming out is that someone else was responsible.
The law has long had to deal with that kind of response. A solicitor, for example, is not entitled to say that he/she is following the advice of Counsel; that advice must be assessed by the solicitor and not be blindly followed.
Probably a nurse should not follow a doctor’s directions where they are clearly and obviously wrong. A pharmacist should not dispense a prescription where the pharmacist knows or should know that the wrong drug is being prescribed (or the perception is of such; bad handwriting should be considered).