Listen to this article:
An executive is in a meeting with the CEO.
The executive shares a report.
The CEO asks, “Do you trust this report?”
The executive replies, “Yes.”
To which the CEO responds, “Why?”
How often is that question asked, and when it’s asked, how often is it answered confidently or honestly?
Think about the hardest question your boss ever asked you.
Chances are it started with the word, “Why.”
I once received a great piece of advice from a corporate executive: before making a decision, be sure you can answer the “why” questions. If you don’t have answers, or you don’t have good answers, then you’re making the wrong decision or you haven’t adequately thought through the decision.
Responsibility and accountability are two concepts that frequently come up together in organizations. Distinguishing between them is a common interview question. Most of us are familiar with RACI charts, assigning responsibility and accountability for different project tasks to different individuals or teams. We may be less accustomed to thinking about the relationship between the two at an organizational level.
For example:
A software developer is responsible for writing code.
A product owner is accountable for whether the product succeeds.
A data engineer is responsible for building a pipeline.
A data owner is accountable for whether the information can be trusted.
Responsibility and accountability are therefore related, but operate at different levels. A responsible person completes the assigned work while an accountable person accepts ownership of the decisions they make and the outcomes that follow.
My focus in this series of articles is accountability.
Accountability is accepting ownership for the decisions you make, doing the best you can within your authority, explaining your decisions, and learning from the results.
To be clear, accountability is NOT about guaranteeing success. It’s not about being blamed for every bad outcome or controlling every variable. In fact, the higher you go in the management chain, the more uncertainty and ambiguity you have to deal with in your decision making, while at the same time the impact of your decisions increases. It’s accepting ownership of the decisions and the factors that you could control.
You are not accountable for the rain. You are accountable for deciding to hold the event outside without checking the forecast or having a contingency plan.
The traditional decision process involves gathering information, evaluating alternatives, making a decision, and learning from the results. There is no shortage of resources on the subject, but almost all of them are focused on the question: How do people make better decisions?
My purpose here is to answer a slightly different question: How do people make accountable decisions?
Being accountable means explaining and standing behind the decision and involves the additional step of owning the decision after it is made.
Notice that the two steps before the decision, gathering information and evaluating alternatives, enable a good decision. The two steps after the decision, owning the decision and learning from the results, demonstrate accountability.
The quality of a decision is largely determined before you’re even presented with the decision.
Decision time is too late to start building the information, process, and organizational support required to make a good decision. Without that foundation, the decision suffers, you won’t be able to adequately explain it, and the most important lesson may be that you needed to build that foundation in the first place.
A single accountable decision is valuable, but organizations don’t succeed because one person makes one accountable decision. They succeed because thousands of actionable decisions are made every single day across the enterprise.
This means that regardless of role, everyone in the organization must ultimately answer the question: Why do you trust this?
The “this” might be a decision, an action, a piece of information, or the performance of an entire team.
Accountability is applicable at all organizational levels.
Everyone may be asked the same fundamental question, but each person answers it according to the scope of their authority. The object of accountability changes, but accountability itself does not. More importantly, those answers aren’t independent. They’re connected, with each level relying on the levels above and below it like links in a chain.
The Accountability Chain connects accountable decisions across the organization.
We’ll work through the chain from front-line staff to the executive team, but it is important to recognize that the links are organized by decision scope, not organizational hierarchy. While those often align, they don’t have to.
Operational Scope (Front-Line Staff, Operators): We don’t often associate accountability with this level, but they’re accountable for answering a very specific question: Why did you perform this action? Accountability is about accurate execution, following procedures, and producing reliable transactions. They create the operational evidence that allows the next level to answer its accountability questions.
Professional Scope (Architects, Engineers, Analysts, Stewards): Their decision scope is professional and they’re accountable for the question: Why did you make this decision? Accountability is about professional judgment, defensible recommendations, and documented rationale that allows the next level to answer its accountability questions.
Organizational Scope (Directors, Managers, Product Owners): Here, accountability is about organizational performance. They are accountable for the question: Why should I trust this organization, function, or team? Instead of simply pointing to talented people or saying, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” they should create the conditions in which others can make accountable decisions, set priorities, and reinforce the right behaviors.
Enterprise Scope (CEO, Executive Team): Finally we have corporate leadership. Their decision-scope is enterprise-wide and they’re accountable for the question: Why should I trust this enterprise? Executives provide strategic direction, set expectations, build organizational confidence, and perhaps most importantly create a culture of accountability.
Nobody can personally validate every piece of information they receive. That would be impossible.
Organizations function because trust is delegated.
Each level relies upon the evidence, controls, and accountable behavior produced by the level below. The Accountability Chain explains how that delegated trust is earned.
Assurance flows upward, providing the evidence required to answer the “why” questions.
It justifies the trust. Each level not only answers its own accountability question, but also creates the conditions that allow adjacent levels to answer theirs.
Authority, support, and enablement flow downward, creating the conditions for accountable decisions at every level.
Leadership doesn’t just delegate work, it delegates decision-making authority, establishes expectations, provides resources, and removes barriers. Authority enables accountable decision making. Together, upward assurance and downward authority preserve the organization’s ability to answer the question, “Why do you trust this?” at every level.
The Accountability Chain operationalizes accountability.
It provides the coordinated mechanism that makes organizational accountability actionable. It explains how organizations scale trust by connecting accountable decisions through an unbroken chain of evidence, assurance, authority, and enablement.
Now, let’s see what happens when we apply the same model to information management.
The Data Accountability Chain applies the Accountability Chain to information management.
It follows the same four links, organized by the scope of the data-related decision each level is trusted to make. Each Information Management discipline exists to support one or more links in the Data Accountability Chain. Let’s look at the data accountability questions for those same four levels.
Operational Scope: Why should this piece of data be trusted? Because it was captured accurately, validated at its source, produced according to defined business rules, and can be traced to its origin.
Professional Scope: Why should this analysis or information product be trusted? Because it is based on trusted data, sound professional judgment, transparent methods, documented assumptions, and evidence that can be explained and reviewed.
Organizational Scope: Why should this organization’s information be trusted? Because the organization consistently applies agreed-upon governance, quality standards, stewardship practices, and controlled processes that produce information that is monitored, measured, and fit for purpose.
Enterprise Scope: Why should the enterprise’s information be trusted? Because the enterprise has established a culture where governance, accountability, and information management capabilities consistently produce trustworthy information across the enterprise.
Again, confidence and trust are built from the bottom-up, while expectations and enablement are built from the top-down. As accountability moves upward through the enterprise, facts become evidence, evidence becomes assurance, and assurance becomes organizational confidence. As leadership moves downward through the organization, strategic intent becomes organizational capability, capability becomes operational enablement, and enablement becomes effective action.
Every level both depends upon and enables the others. Every level has a natural incentive to support those around it, especially those beneath it.
If management isn’t supportive of professionals, then professionals cannot provide the assurance that allows management to confidently and accountably answer the “Why?” questions it receives.
Next week we’ll continue this train of thought, looking at how the Enterprise Data team facilitates the Data Accountability Chain and answering the question:
What is the real purpose of Information Management?
