Accountability in a business context often carries negative baggage. You've heard the phrases: "single throat to choke", “single wringable neck” or "hold people's feet to the fire". These expressions reveal a lot about how we typically approach accountability in organizations.
For software teams already dealing with complex challenges and shifting requirements, fear-based accountability is particularly counterproductive. It doesn’t have to be that way. In this post, we’ll explore how to bring about a more compassionate accountability.
What is accountability?
According to Lerner (1994) accountability is:
a universal feature of social interaction through which people hold other people implicitly or explicitly responsible for their actions.
Accountability emerges wherever there's division of labour. For example, in a hospital Accident and Emergency, the triage nurse who decides which patients to see first is held accountable for prioritizing correctly, while the doctor diagnosing those patients is held accountable for making sound medical decisions. Each person's specialized skills come with the responsibility to perform their role properly, and others depend on them doing so.
This sense of accountability arises from three primary drivers:
Self-esteem – linking work to personal competence and purpose
Impression management – influencing how others perceive us
Economic self-interest – being rewarded for task completion
These three drivers align closely with self-determination theory’s basic psychological need for competence, relatedness and autonomy (popularized by Dan Pink’s Drive). If you’re going to design an effective accountability system, you must take these drivers into account1.
Preconditions for Effective Accountability
Before thinking about holding someone accountable (or being held accountable), there’s a number of preconditions that must be met.
Structural Preconditions
Tasks, deliverables, and deadlines must be crystal clear. For software teams, this is tricky for a couple of reasons.
As software folk, we already know that most of what we build ends up being unused and unloved (here’s a collection of references). There’s a gap between what users say they want and what they actually need.
Software is particularly complicated. We collectively suck at estimating because the only way to get an accurate estimate is to either have done it before, or to do most of the work in the first place.
The right balance in software is hard to find. You’ve got to be specific enough to be meaningful, yet outcome-focused to avoid being a meaningless checkbox. Frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) (I really like Christina Wodtke’s framing of this) can help. OKRs create accountability by establishing measurable outcomes (key results) that teams must achieve to reach their broader goals (objectives).
As well as having a clarity of goal, clarity on ownership is super important. Complex organizational structures with committees, change advisory boards, ivory-tower architects, or micro-managers diffuse responsibility and thus accountability.
And alongside clarity on ownership must come the decision-making authority to go along with it. There’s zero point having accountability for achieving an OKR if every decision is second-guessed. If you have accountability but no autonomy, then run a mile, it’s a trap!
Psychological Preconditions
If the overall environment is fear-based then you don’t have accountability, instead you have a pathological organization where any failure will be blamed on someone else. That’s not accountability!
Instead, accountability must be paired with psychological safety. High safety with low accountability creates comfort zones; high accountability without safety causes anxiety / blame. Psychological safety combined with accountability fosters confident collaboration, open communication, and learning (see insights from Amy Edmondson).
To create this, what’d you need? I’m sure there’s much more than this, but here are a few places to start:
Co-created goals - I’m much more likely to be in the right mindset to achieve a goal if I’m involved in the creation of it!
Role modelling the right behaviours - if you’re holding me accountable for something, I want you to be genuinely interested in what’s happening and help tackle setbacks constructively (inquiry, not justice).
Cultural norms - How the organization behaved in the past is the best predictor of the future. Is trust established and maintained? Is failure punished or introspected (and so on).
Relational preconditions
There's nothing worse than being accountable for something but no-one caring about it. If a task fails in a forest and no-one is listening, who cares?! Accountability isn't a solo sport; it takes two people to form an accountability relationship, and the quality of that relationship determines whether it will be successful.
The relationship must be built on mutual trust and reciprocal vulnerability. The person being held accountable needs to trust they won't be thrown under the bus for honest mistakes, while the person holding them accountable must genuinely believe in their commitment to the work. This trust enables real conversations about progress and problems, rather than just performative status updates.
Regular check-ins should be driven by curiosity rather than control asking, "What are you discovering?" or "What's getting in your way?" rather than "Why isn't this done?" When someone knows their struggles will be met with support rather than judgment, and their successes with genuine recognition, they're far more likely to own both their victories and their setbacks.
The relationship must also maintain consistent presence, not just crisis intervention. Showing up only when things go wrong trains people to hide problems; showing up regularly builds the psychological safety needed for early problem-solving. Both parties need shared clarity on why the work matters, not just what needs to be done (that's structural) or how people feel about it (that's psychological), but why this person's contribution specifically matters to this other person and to the broader mission. Without this relational foundation, even the clearest OKRs and safest environments will struggle to create true accountability. With it, accountability transforms from external pressure into a supportive structure that helps people do their best work.
Designing effective accountability systems.
Effective accountability systems must ensure that these preconditions are true throughout the lifetime of the work.
Create Clarity
The foundation of any accountability system is absolute clarity across five key dimensions.
Expectations must be specific. What exactly needs to be accomplished, by when, and to what standard? Vague goals mean vague results.
Resources must be adequate and accessible. There's no point holding someone accountable for building a house without providing the tools.
Measurement criteria need to be established upfront. How will both parties know when success has been achieved?
The feedback process must be defined: when will check-ins occur, what will they cover, and how will progress be tracked?
Consequences need to be transparent, addressing both positive outcomes (recognition, rewards) and negative ones (support, course correction, or escalation).
Without clarity in all five areas, accountability becomes a guessing game where failure is almost inevitable.
Address Real Obstacles
Simply demanding accountability without addressing systemic barriers is a leadership failure. As research from MIT Sloan highlights, organizations often create conditions that make accountability nearly impossible.
When people juggle too many competing priorities, they can't fully own any single outcome.
Large teams dilute individual responsibility until everyone assumes someone else will handle it.
Ambiguous ownership creates finger-pointing rather than problem-solving.
Insufficient resources (whether time, tools, or authority) set people up for failure from the start.
If you’re making someone accountable for a task, then you must actively identify and remove these obstacles rather than expecting individuals to heroically overcome systemic dysfunction.
Create Effective Feedback Loops
Visibility drives accountability, but the wrong kind of visibility kills it. Think of the difference between a coach watching your gym session with you versus a security camera recording your every move. Both create visibility, but only one helps you improve.
Regular check-ins work best when they focus on understanding, not monitoring. Ask "What's blocking you?" instead of "Why isn't this done?" Share metrics to illuminate progress, not to shame people for being behind. These conversations should go both ways. If someone can't tell you that they need better tools or that competing priorities are killing their focus, you're not having real accountability discussions.
Make progress visible in ways that motivate rather than intimidate. Celebrate the small wins along the way, because most important work doesn't happen in dramatic breakthroughs. It happens in steady, incremental improvements that compound over time. And don't rely solely on manager-to-employee accountability. When teams hold each other accountable, you get honest feedback and mutual support instead of people just trying to look good for the boss.
Leverage the Accountability Ladder
The accountability ladder helps clarify ownership levels and can serve as a tool for folks to graduate to higher levels of accountability (taking action!). Understanding where someone sits on this ladder allows for targeted interventions. Someone in denial needs different support than someone making excuses, who needs different help than someone already developing solutions.
See also the excellent work on Intent-Based Leadership!
Denial: "There’s no problem."
Blame: "It’s not my fault."
Excuses: "I couldn't because..."
Waiting: "I’ll do it when…"
Acknowledgement: "I understand clearly."
Ownership: "I'm responsible."
Solutions: "Here's my plan."
Action: "I’m doing it now."
This video by Bruce Gordon illustrates the ladder using his son’s homework excuses. Well worth the 5 minute watch.
Build Cultural Accountability
Ultimately, healthy accountability must become woven into organizational culture rather than imposed through policies. This happens through consistent actions that build mutual respect and shared responsibility. When accountability is embedded in organizational values (not just posted on walls but lived in daily decisions) it becomes "how we work" rather than "what we're told to do.".
This one is the long-game, and it only happens through consistency and trust over a long period of time.
Conclusion
Genuine accountability cannot be forced through fear or micromanagement. It emerges naturally in the right environment by setting clear expectations, providing adequate resources, cultivating psychological safety, and (of course!) genuine care for outcomes.
The shift from "throat to choke" accountability to empowered ownership requires changing fundamental assumptions. Replace blame with curiosity, punishment with learning, and fear with trust. True accountability combines economic incentives, personal pride, and social dynamics. It requires people to believe their contributions matter within a larger purpose.
Accountability shouldn’t be a bad word, it should be the property that emerges when you have trust, clarity and mutual respect.
That’s almost a pun!