Essay On The Importance Of Accountability

Accountability (Noun): The obligation imposed by law or lawful order or regulation on an officer or other person for keeping accurate record of property documents or funds. The person having this obligation may or may not have actual possession of the property documents or funds. Accountability is concerned primarily with records while responsibility is concerned primarily with custody care and safekeeping (JP 1-02 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms); responsibility to someone or for some activity; responsibility to someone or for some activity. Webster’s dictionary describes “Accountability” as having 4 “pillars” or fundamental structures: responsibility, answerability, trustworthiness, and liability. These

When given a lawful order or direction/directive, soldiers are liable to perform that action. Complaining is acceptable but quietly and only to colleagues, and it must be performed to the best of their ability. If a soldier fails at an action, they are answerable to that failure and must take personal responsibility for their part of the failure no matter what position they hold or rank they possess. All soldiers from E-1 to O-10 must have a sense of personal responsibility to be able to claim a sense of accountability. While accountability is not in the Army values, the spirit of accountability runs deep in the values. In particular “Duty: To fulfill your obligations.” One cannot uphold the Army values to the fullest without keeping a sense of accountability and maintaining the pillars on which it stands. As a leader, accountability is an essential function for both the leader, the leaders’ leaders, and the leaders’ subordinates. Without accountability and its pillars, a leader would need to supervise every action a soldier takes and constantly stay with their leaders to perform the actions needed for the leader to do his/ her job. If a leader must supervise either subordinates or superiors, it is taking attention away from other duties that must be performed. This will cause the leader to either worker harder than needed or lose accountability themselves, possibly