November 21, 2004
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Have I ever mentioned how I absolutely despise the word
“accountability”. I don’t know how it because a common word in the
American discourse but in recent years it has and it’s driving me
nuts.Every single day you hear something about how we have to hold someone
accountable or how important it is to have accountable in this or that.
I first noted the words use in the business world but it wasn’t all
that popular, it really because infamous when it started to be brandied
about with regards to education. Now it is used in just about
everything. Doctors have to be accountable. Lawyers have to be
accountable. Institutions have to be held accountable.
Politicians have to be accountable. States have to be
accountable. Businesses have to be accountable. Parents have to
be accountable. Soldiers have to be held accountable. Murderers have to
be held accountable. Theives have to be held accountable. File sharers
accountable. Terrorists accountable. Children accountable. Human beings
accountable. Computers accountable. Traffic Lights accountable. Green
slimes absolutely *have* to be held accountable for killing all those
poor players of “Dragon Warrior I” all those years ago….It really does get ridiculous. The language is totally exaggerated,
totally out of place, and often just a load of you know what. But for
some reaon we now think of holding people accountable as a kind of
virtue and not being held accountable as a kind of high crime, treason
against the universe itself.The existence of the accountability dailectic is somewhat to be
understood as it is an over reaction to the time period not long ago
where a great many people felt and some still feel that humanity is
losing its willingless to take responsibility for anything. You
remember those speaches right “That’s what’s wrong with people. Nobody
takes responsibility any more.” or “We have to instill in our children
a sense of responsibility a willingless to take responsibility for
actions.”Well truth is we didn’t ever get to a state where people are more
willing to take responsibility. Arguably there never really was such a
time frame and the whole talk about it is just an example of the common
shared delusions of nostalgia.But we did start to adopt a language of accountability. Unforunately
accountability is in all ways the wrong kind of a dialogue to be
having. In many ways it is a running away from the deeper and more
significant talk of responsibility. In many ways it is an abandonment
of all kinds of deeper analaysis and is mostly just a way for people to
feel superior over one another.Just take a look at the term’s use. Usually you have something that
goes wrong. Something always goes wrong you see. It is the fundamental
nature of the universe though of course many persons absolutely refuse
to believe that anything will go wrong and act shocked when something
does. These people are deluded and we should not allow them to appear
within ten feet of any serious decision making.But anyway back on topic. When something goes wrong there are a number
of reactions we can take to it. We can, for example, look for a way to
fix the problem, or to avoid it in the future. That’s what most people
want to do when they encounter a problem. They want to remove it and
never see it again no matter how unrealistic that may be. But still, I
think that is a laudible aim and a good general reaction to a problem.
And I am glad to be a human being when this is the first and foremost
reaction to when things go wrong.There is a problem though. The search for how to fix or avoid a
problem in the future always entails in part the discovery of
what precisely went wrong and why it went wrong. That very often
involves a human being of some sort either making a mistake or being
incapable of preventing the problem due to lack of resources, lack of
training, lack of willingness, lack of ability, or lack of caring. Or
sometimes none of these things. Sometimes someone was there did
everything within their power and had all of the resources but the
problem happened anyway. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.
No one can be 100% vigilant 100% of the time. Things go wrong.So when there is a reason and it is associated with a person and we
find it, we logically say that person is a responsible party. There may
be many such responsible parties and there are usually a whole heck of
a lot. Once you’ve identified what parties are responsible and in what
ways they are responsible you can logically start to solve the problem
or work toward ensuring the the problem does not happen again.Usually that involves looking at each party, the reason they are partly
responsible and how you they can avoid getting into a similar situation
again. Often it even involves utilizing the person’s abilities and
knowledge of the problem for which he is responsible to better
understand the problem and better come up with a way to solve it.
Normally in the end the best solutions involve working with all
responsible parties to come up with a comprehensive plan of action that
addresses the root causes of the problem and creates a number of
contingency plans to avoid the problem ever happening again.When this process is undergone correctly and intelligently no one feels
bad. Some people do feel responsible, but that’s not exactly the same
thing. GEnerally people will feel good and confident about their
ability to if everyone sticks to the new plan at least lessen the
likelihood of the thing going wrong again. Of course, when the thing
does go wrong again, and it undoubtable will because the universe is a
prankster out to get us all, we would simply undergo the same process
again of establishing or refocusing responsibiltiies, comprehending
causual connections, and working together to create logical alterations
that will make it less likely for the problem to occur in the future.Now this is the good way. This is the right way to respond to a
problem. There’s a much worse way and it is at the heart of the
shifting of language away from ideas of responsibility, teamwork, and
solution-speak, to mere accountability speak.You see the accountability model takes as its fundamental assumption
that you may not ever know the reasons something goes wrong and so you
shouldn’t really even bother to try. The point instead is to focus
entirely on the causes that can be assigned blame. The basic system
works like this: For each area in which something could go wrong,
assign a “responsible party”. This responsible party is responsible not
in the sense of “I feel responsible for this as it is important to me
and I care about it.” but rather in the sense of “You are now assigned
responsibility for this thing. So you’d better start caring about what
happens to it.” The distinction is very important. This mockery
of responsibility gives rise to the term accountability.You see in this model when something goes wrong in the area you look
immediately to the responsible party and hold them accountable. That
means that that accountable party loses something substantive when the
thing goes wrong be it respsect of their peers or money in their
paycheck or decreased chance of promotion. Thus when you are held
accountable you have something to lose so you really don’t want it to
happen. You’ll do everything in your power not to be held accountable.And that of course is the beauty of the accountability system. The idea
is to avoid having problems come up not by actually fixing them but by
delegating authority so that some underling is so terrified of not
succeeding in not having problems come up that they will work
themselves half to death to avoid it. And their boss, similarly
terrified of his boss holding him accountable, will do the same. And
his boss and so on right on up to the top of the chain where someone is
accountable to no one whatsoever. More clever systems, also introduce a
reflexive accountability so that those at the top of the chain
can be held accountable by a number of underlings acting in concert but
by and large that is rarely implemented or acted upon.So as you can see accountability is all about shifting your talk to
asking questions like “Whose fault is it?” rather than questions like
“How can we fix it? What is the best way to keep this from happening
again?” Accountability is in no way about discovery of causes or
true explanations of what went wrong, instead it is all about making
someone or something feel as if they ARE the sole and most
significant cause of what goes wrong. Accountability isn’t about
a person having integrity and taking responsibility for what has gone
wrong. It is instead in every way about someone being assigned a
responsibility and then being forced to defend it lest they be blamed
when something does go wrong.No doubt you can see immediately why accountability talk is absurd and
downright dangerous. It is really nothing but the use of the force of
fear and anger to enforce action. An accountable person who is afraid
of losing something precious to them will do whatever it takes not to
be held accountable. That will, without a doubt, involve tilting the
truth, fudging things a little, trying to make bad things look good and
make good things look not as good so as not to raise expectations.
Accountability makes people feel the need to be dishonest. Worst it
makes people want to be cruel Because a person in danger of being held
account’s best bet to avoid further accountability is to make someone
else seem like the accountable one. People have every desire to shift
off responsibilty to say “that’s not my responsibility, it’s that other
guy’s responsibility” Or that other department or that other agency,
etc. You also have every incentive to blame your underlings, because if
its your underling’s fault although you do take some accountability,
you can at least defend yourself by saying “If I’d had better
underlings…” Ironically picking poor underlings is not
generally seen as unforgivable a thing as making a mistake yourself. At
least with the picking of poor underlings you have to be found guilty a
number of times before people start to really believe that you are the
problem.So is accountability then always bad? Is it always the wrong kind of
language to use when discussing problems? No. I wish it were that
simple. There is a very real circumstance where accountability is not
just important it’s essential. The thing is accountability works best
when it is upwards focused not downward focused. The people who really
absolutely have to be held accountable are those who if they were not
accountable for the consequences of their actions have a great
incentive to act with impunity. That is a person who fears no loss of
their wealth or power might very well make decisions that are
devastating to those under them on a whim or just to pad their own
pockets more. We’ve certainly seen the era of corporate scandals. We
know how important it is that these people were held accountable. They
needed to be ascribed blame for their actions that were criminal.
But… that’s why we have a laws and a criminal justice system. It is
to make their be consequences for blatantly wrong acts. It is to make
someone take the blame when they deliberately choose to make something
go wrong that cauises some harm to others. Contrast this to the new
accountability, where people have something to lose even when they make
honest mistakes and have every incentive to exert all their energy in
striving to look perfect and almost no incentive in striving to
actually be better at anything. Which makes sense?We need to talk more about responsibility and more about problem
solving and reserve the talk of accountability for when it matters. The
use of accountability as a cheap excuse to avoid deep thought about
hard issues has got to stop.
