ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability is the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the result in a transparent manner (www.busniessdictionary.com). Accountability is an obligation; duty bond which could be externally imposed or personally imposed by an individual to account for its actions or activities. It demands accepting responsibility for actions or inaction and being ready to make public the commendation or rebuke in a transparent manner. One is not accountability until he/she is ready to take blames for his failures and applause for his success. The trend I have seen very common is people’s readiness to make public their success while keeping away their failures; this is not real accountability in real sense of it. There must be transparency in times of both success and failure. External accountability is when a system is putting this demand on you, for some if the system is not in place they will have no check. But there is yet an internal or self-imposed accountability; it is based on personal resolve to hold oneself accountable, this demands a lot of discipline. I have seen many people go this way but never travel long on path and off they go. Accountability is responsibility that goes with authority; the responsibility is to use the authority justifiably and credibly. Authority without accountability is tyranny. Real accountability has a trend or path it must take; this path is Freedom- Courage- Courage – Accountability. There must be the liberty to make a choice, the courage to make the right choice even in the face of contention, and a commitment to act right; for choosing right and acting wrongly is as worse as choosing wrongly. These are the make ups for accountability. PRINCIPLES OF ACCOUNTABILITY Accountability has principles and these include Transparency (openness), Participation (involvement), Response (action), and Reflection & Deliberation (assessment of your actions or in-actions).