Your annual performance review discussion is coming up. A staff member on your team made material mistakes on a key analysis, again. You and your team are about to miss a significant deadline on a strategic initiative you are leading.
Two things are common to all three of those scenarios. They almost certainly evoke heightened emotions, and they involve accountability.
We have all likely experienced at least one of those scenarios, and numerous others like them, where we are about to be held accountable or must hold someone who reports to us accountable.
But should we wince every time we hear the word “accountability”? What exactly is it and why is it an inescapable — and valuable — part of our professional lives?
Accountability defined
First, a dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster: “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.” Note the key elements: Someone is responsible for something and must account for one’s actions. This emphasises the obligation aspect of accountability.
A shorter and less formal phrasing emphasises the willingness aspect: Own your results.
In practice, we readily equate accountability with our supervisors calling us out when we mess up. And though monitoring our performance is an important part of holding us accountable, two other vital behaviours must come into play for accountability to be effective.
We (and our supervisor) must first be absolutely clear about what is expected of us. Only then can we reasonably and justly be held accountable for our performance. And finally, in a step not always considered, we need to take appropriate action on any gaps between our performance and the communicated expectations.
Put simply, the key accountability behaviours are:
- Communicate clear expectations.
- Monitor performance.
- Take appropriate action on the gaps, if any, between performance and expectations.
Vertical accountability
The primary context for accountability as described above is our vertical workplace relationships: upward accountability to our boss and downward accountability with our direct reports and teams. In a workplace, all of us have a boss and thus must be accountable. And many of us have teams we supervise composed of direct reports we hold accountable.
The upward and downward accountability directions lie on a vertical axis. Unless we are in a company with only one employee, that vertical accountability reality is inescapable.
But we sometimes overlook these aspects of vertical accountability:
- It goes two ways — being accountable and holding a team accountable. We possibly gravitate towards one while neglecting the other.
- It involves two parties: the employee and the supervisor. And it’s most effective when both take an active role in all three key behaviours: For instance, the supervisor should regularly and clearly communicate expectations, and the employee should speak up if the instructions are unclear or absent. Both parties should be involved in monitoring performance and in identifying and discussing gaps and appropriate actions to take on them.
- Gaps between performance and expectations happen. But they aren’t always shortfalls or lapses. Sometimes performance exceeds expectations. A gap like that calls for appropriate action, just like a missed expectation.
- Expectations and performance should be broadly construed. We may readily focus on deadlines, technical requirements, and task-focused aspects of the vertical accountability dynamic. But expectations and performance also encompass policies, procedures, and processes; strategy; principles for how we treat each other; and our company’s mission, vision, and values.
Absent accountability
Accountability is sometimes misunderstood, yet it’s also inescapable and not always pleasant or easy. But why is it valuable? Why should we work hard to cultivate it?
Imagine its absence.
Imagine your company without at least some minimal understanding of job performance expectations for its employees. Possibly lots of activity — though certainly not optimally coordinated or effective, efficient, or strategically aligned.
How will employees grow their professional and leadership capabilities without feedback on how they are doing? How likely are you to retain and benefit from your strongest performers’ contribution if you fail to take action to recognise it through a promotion, a raise or bonus, commendation (public or private), or a new challenge — when they, again, exceed performance expectations?
And what happens if you are not accountable? If, for example, you lack clarity about what is expected of you, your effectiveness would be limited and your professional contribution misaligned. If things go exceptionally poorly, your performance gaps could lead to a demotion or termination, either of which means serious reputational fallout.
Horizontal accountability
Accountability in any supervisor-employee relationship can be challenging, and finance professionals regularly find themselves with an additional challenge. By the nature of the finance department’s responsibilities, finance professionals are injected horizontally into the vertical accountability of others in the company.
Common examples include:
- Routine reporting of budget-versus-actual variances.
- Reporting on department performance — production levels, expense management, etc.
- Performing and reporting a debrief analysis of a strategic initiative’s financial performance relative to the expectations of the board and executive management.
- And, as an especially delicate example, providing financial performance information that the board uses to hold the CEO accountable.
In each of these, the finance professionals may not have been involved in setting expectations, and they weren’t responsible for taking action relative to those expectations. They are not part of the vertical. But they are, even if only as suppliers of data, in the middle of discussions about whether, how, and why someone else’s performance did or did not meet expectations. If performance fell short, it’s an uncomfortable discussion, or worse. And it’s often awkward and uncomfortable for the innocent bystander from finance as well.
How to avoid making a difficult dynamic worse?
- Maintain confidentiality. You know what’s going on in that other department, but that doesn’t mean others need to know or hear it from you.
- Make your communication fact-based. Don’t assume, ascribe, or communicate what you might infer about motives.
- Make sure the data you provide is absolutely reliable and accurate. Others’ future assignments or bonuses or jobs may depend on it.
In short, be a professional. Just as you would expect and appreciate were you in the same situation, be 100% honest and 100% respectful — as Joseph Grenny and co-authors advise in their book, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High.
Accountability mindset
Because it’s inescapable, challenging, and valuable, it’s worth working hard and continuously to make accountability effective, both vertically and horizontally. That includes establishing accountability patterns, structures, and practices.
But the vital element is our mindset. We won’t work at accountability if we don’t believe it’s valuable and if we aren’t willing to overcome the challenges.
Embracing and fostering the following perspectives will help with developing a healthy accountability mindset:
- It’s vital and important even though it can be uncomfortable. As a professional and a leader, you’re regularly engaged in tackling important challenges. Effective accountability fits in that category.
- You can’t grow in your professional and leadership competencies if you don’t know how you’re doing. Neither can your team.
- Hyper-clear communication of expectations is a gift to all parties involved: the employee, the supervisor, and the company. We should go beyond communicating expectations clearly enough to be understood (a high bar); we should strive to make them so clear they cannot be misunderstood (an exceedingly high bar).
- Feedback on your performance, even if it’s about when you missed expectations, can (and should) be both 100% honest and 100% respectful. And you can work hard to provide the same 100% combination when providing feedback to your team.
What it might sound like
As we struggle with accountability day to day, we might hear grumbling and angry voices or maybe silence about the upcoming performance review, the error in the analysis, the missed key deadline, and more.
But accountability can also sound like this:
- “You led that project so well that I have a new challenge for you.”
- “Thank you for tackling that difficult assignment!”
- “I’m grateful for that feedback. It stung a bit, but I want to grow and do better, and hearing your candid perspective will help me do exactly that.”
- “Well done!”
We can’t avoid accountability in the workplace or necessarily make it easy. We can make it effective. Doing so is well worth the effort.
Eric R. Alexander, CPA, is a US-based consultant and former banking sector CFO. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
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“Mindset, Accountability, Change: How to Empower the Finance Team”, FM magazine, 28 February 2025
“Leaders, Employees View High Performance Differently”, FM magazine, 21 February 2025