# Accountability

*Tom Geraghty · Power, Safety & Human Error, Voice & Silence*

Reclaims accountability from the apparatus of blame. Accountability — account-ability — is etymologically the capacity to give an honest narrative of what happened, situated in context. It has been colonised by its near-opposite: the imposition of consequences on whoever is nearest to a bad outcome. The distinction matters structurally. Responsibility involves doing; accountability involves reporting — they are not synonyms, and legislation that treats them as such (as in New Zealand's Maritime Transport Act) produces predictable injustices. Draws on Tetlock's finding that accounts are shaped by the anticipated audience rather than the truth; Roberts's relational framing of accountability as dialogic rather than monologic; O'Neill's observation that systems designed to demonstrate transparency often produce performances of it instead; and Dekker's argument that the question after failure is not just 'who is accountable' but 'how do we learn'. The Bawa-Garba and Vaught cases illustrate the mechanism: both clinicians were honest about what happened in systemically compromised conditions, both were prosecuted, and the lesson other clinicians drew was not 'be more careful' but 'be less transparent'. Accountability without context is blame. Blame is cognitively cheap, emotionally satisfying, politically useful, and operationally useless. Genuine accountability is rare because it asks the powerful to give honest accounts of themselves — and in cultures where blame secures position, a genuine account risks it.

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## Connected concepts (17)

- [Calculus of Voice](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/the-calculus-of-voice.md)
- [Accountability: The Neglected Social Context of Judgment and Choice](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/tetlock-1985.md) (paper)
- [Local Rationality](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/local-rationality.md)
- [PS is Political](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-is-political.md)
- [The Possibilities of Accountability](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/roberts-1991.md) (paper)
- [Typologies of Power](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/typologies-of-power.md)
- [A Question of Trust](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/oneill-2002.md) (paper)
- [Blametropism](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/blametropism.md)
- [Just Culture](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/just-culture.md)
- [Learning from Error](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/learning-from-error-or-punishing-it.md)
- [Learning Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/learning-teams.md)
- [Barriers to PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/barriers-to-psychological-safety.md)
- [Human Error & PS](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psychological-safety-human-error.md)
- [PSIRF](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/psirf.md)
- [Speaking Up at Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/speaking-up-at-work.md)
- [The Lived Experience of Accountability: A Phenomenological Study in Maritime Safety](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/parris-2023.md) (paper)
- [At the Heart of Morality Lies Folk Psychology](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/guglielmo-monroe-malle-2009.md) (paper)