No, not 'exculpating' -
show or declare that (someone) is not guilty of wrongdoing; and neither the converse.
The purpose of establishing the processes involved in certification, the limitations of test systems, assumptions made, commercial pressure, etc, is to better understand normal human performance within behaviour shaping situations, and to do that without hindsight bias.
Similarly for the accident crews, establish the detail of the evolving situation which they had to identify and manage from after takeoff to the end of flight.
And from the above identify any mismatch which would require a change of action - design, documentation, training. A difficulty is that whilst both the manufacturer and regulator work in the real time - 'now', a crew operating the aircraft system under review will be in some unspecified 'future'.
In order to compare these the reviewers require 'Requisite Imagination' - The fine art of anticipating what might go wrong. (*)
The further reference involving culture is ironic in that the congressional report subtitle chooses 'cost' before 'lessons' (safety).
Also note the role of language in culture; even nations using English can adapt words to mean whatever is required for them to mean, particularly change of meaning with situation. (e.g. TCAS 'advisory')
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...might_go_wrong
also
Cultures with Requisite Imagination,
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10...662-02933-6_25
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...avioral_Issues