Quotes About Accountability

Underneath every simple, obvious story about 'human error,' there is a deeper, more complex story about the organization.

Accountability can mean letting people tell their account, their story.

Unjust responses to failure are almost never the result of bad performance. They are the result of bad relationships.

forward-looking accountability."2 Accountability that is backward-looking (often the kind in trials or lawsuits) tries to find a scapegoat, to blame and shame an individual for messing up. But accountability is about looking ahead. Not only should accountability acknowledge the mistake and the harm resulting from it, it should lay out the opportunities (and responsibilities!) for making changes so that the probability of such harm happening again goes down.

It has to do with being open, with a willingness to share information about safety problems without the fear of being nailed for them.

Oh, and what about the nurse? She was fired and charged as a criminal. That's Newton, too. If there are really bad effects, there must have been really bad causes. A dead patient means a really bad nurse. Much worse than if the patient had survived. So much worse, she's got to be a criminal. Must be. We can't escape Newton even in our thinking about one of the most difficult areas of safety: accountability for the consequences of failure.

A just culture accepts nobody's account as "true" or "right" and others wrong.

Creating a climate in which disclosure is possible and acceptable is the organization's responsibility.

Saying what people failed to do has no role in understanding 'human error.

The question that drives safety work in a just culture is not who is responsible for failure, rather, it asks what is responsible for things going wrong. What is the set of engineered and organized circumstances that is responsible for putting people in a position where they end up doing things that go wrong?

I'm telling you this so that if you ever are in the position of carrying a secret about something that you have done that makes you ashamed you will make the choice to confront yourself. It will take guts to admit that you have behaved in a way that prevents you from being your better self, and then choose to act differently. It

You have two choices. you can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

But I didn't realize then that the consequence of sin is that you have to trample on other people.

God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that who so is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.

By definition, as a Prime Minister I cannot be a liar.

We must fight against tax evasion but also defend the rights of tax evaders, or companies that make mistakes.

This misfortune you find is of your own manufacture. Keep hold of what you have, it will harm no other, for hatred comes home to the hand that chose it.

Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.' Even

If things go wrong, they simply don't repay their debt, the old directors walk away, and new ones come in promising to sweep up the mess

Part of the manager's job is to act as scapegoat, shielding his club's owners from blame.