Accountability is never an easy topic to discuss and is never without its controversies.

With people adopting a more preferred liberal worldview in our  present age, accountability has also become a sensitive matter to deal with.

Generally, people in authority including parents, find it more and more challenging in engaging and managing their followers.

It also doesn’t serve to help the situation with the amount of daily bad press of abusive and manipulative behaviour from leaders in organisations. All these add to the repulsive stance people may have towards submission and being accountable to authority.

Definition of accountability

However, I think the underlining issue that has caused accountability to be such a bad word is because of what it means to different people.

When accountability is not understood correctly among stakeholders, it will likely be carried out inappropriately which may in turn result in ugly confrontations.

I believe that accountability is synonymous with responsibility, blameworthiness and liability. Living in a community, everything we do will have some detrimental affect on the people around us irregardless of our position.

Therefore, contrary to conventional belief that accountability is carried out from down-up or a one-way model, I believe strongly that it is a two-way model with more emphasis on top-down accountability.

Leaders or people in authority do carry more weight of the affects from their every decision made; every word spoken; and every action taken.

Moreover, with leaders displaying accountability, it only begets accountability from followers. Leaders not only lead , but they also lead by example.

I can’t imagine how leadership can expect their followers to truly follow without establishing trust and confidence by being open and transparent.

Doing it for Christ and His Church

Accountability is people-centric and strives to build an environment that nurtures relationships.

Call me idealistic, but I hold on to the biblical belief that the Church is potentially the only place where true accountability can be best exhibited. That is because accountability is about loving God wholeheartedly and loving people fervently.

But the sad reality is that the Church seems to fail miserably in this department. There are far too many scandals from churches that have eclipsed the good deeds of exemplenary churches that have chose love and integrity against greed and lust.

Therefore, with Christ’s reputation and many lives at stake, I believe that leadership in churches should  be more motivated to enforce more check and balances to safe guard the interest of the Church and people.

We desperately need the true Church to shine in these darkest hours and give people fewer excuses to shun and reject the truth of Christ.