Once upon a time I spent a total of 4 hours (over three days) in meetings, stating that I will definitely not approve a security exception. At least, not until someone demonstrates that the exception requested, removes the root cause or is a valid workaround.
Some years ago, during a (quite extended) phishing avalanche in the company I was at the time, the (then) CIO said: Let's fire every user that falls for a phishing mail! That will solve the problem for good. I considered it a joke, and I replied pretty much with a rhyme: Let's train them before we blame them and I didn't give it a second throught. We went on to deploy some training modules, but never really implemented the technical controls on the mail server; an activity that if had been implemented, several of those phishing mails would never have entered the company. I think that this is not strictly a user failure and I'm inclined to blame the IT deparment more than the user.
Last Thursday I took my CRISC exams and - the restless person I am - I had already arranged to take sailing classes over the weekend. I always wanted to take sailing classes, and I had gone sailing once several years ago when I was still living in Greece. My idea was that when I grow old I will buy a small sailing boat and sail around my beloved Crete.
Some major breaches have seen the light of day lately, and everybody agrees that they will keep coming. I don't believe you will find any security professional respecting himself to tell you that this will stop. The reasons are many, but the most important one is the (lack of) security design. Systems, processes and services have been moving to production without security design for years. And unfortunately in many cases they still do.
In our (security) profession it is becoming common to jump on each other's throat; and the result is the public blaming of the CISO involved - like leaving them alone to take some hard steps in the middle of no man's land.