The Accountability Paradox

For many people, accountability is synonymous with suffering the consequences of unmet expectations. “If no one is going to be punished for mistakes, failures, and unmet expectations,” they ask, “what difference does accountability make?” It should come as no surprise that people who perceive accountability this way—as something forced upon them when things go wrong—tend to shy away from taking greater personal accountability. Worse, to further protect and insulate themselves from potential suffering, people begin ignoring their accountability, denying their responsibility, blaming others for their predicaments, citing confusion as a reason for inaction, asking others to tell them what to do, developing elaborate excuse stories, or just waiting to see if things will get better.

Lamentably, many organizations continue to foster this anti-accountability attitude. In general, our society only calls for an accounting when something has gone wrong. Such calls for accounting usually lead to punishment, and no one submits willingly to punishment. So, when management in an organization wants to hold people more accountable, people often run for cover. Here again, people mistakenly believe that accountability is something that the organization’s leadership imposes upon everyone, rather than something everyone in the organization embraces to get results.

All too often, people in organizations view accountability as management’s whipping post—management’s device for deflecting responsibility by using others as scapegoats or whipping boys. When the “whipping boy” practice was introduced over 500 years ago by the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, people believed that kings received their authority from God and were therefore answerable only to him. No one could improperly touch a monarch or heir. Whipping boys were young men born to families of high status and educated with the prince of the realm. Whenever the prince acted in a way that warranted punishment, another boy would take his place at the whipping post.

Needless to say, it’s true that accountability implies consequences, but those consequences are both positive and negative. Anticipation of positive consequences should encourage and strengthen personal ownership throughout an organization or society—unless, of course, leaders rely on the fear of negative consequences to coerce or compel accountability. However, the temporary fruits of coerced or compelled accountability last only long enough to foster more negative views and fears about accountability.