Today companies are expected to learn from incidents in the form of accidents and near misses to improve safety at their facilities. In this article, we examine how two refineries located in Poland and Norway work to learn from incidents. We address the nature of their classification systems and how they select incidents for particularly thorough analysis or investigation, methods for analysis of less severe and severe incidents as well as participation in activities, the nature of follow up activities at the refineries and who these are directed at, as well as learning among contractors who carry out maintenance and projects at the refineries. For each of the stages of incident treatment, we consider the similarities and differences between the refineries and how the practices that are used may affect learning. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 36: 102–108, 2017