Driving Accountability Across the Firm
Picture a partner meeting where an initiative has slipped for the third quarter in a row. Someone says, “We need more accountability,” and heads nod. They discuss adding a new dashboard and another standing meeting. Three months later, the initiative is still in the same spot.
Accountability does more than meet leadership expectations. It turns strategy into work. Most breakdowns start long before someone fails to deliver. So before you add another dashboard, deadline or meeting, find the real problem. Clarity, ownership, measurement and follow-through help you find it.
Start with clarity
You can’t hold people accountable for something they interpret differently. Take an initiative like “improve client communication.” Everyone in your firm might agree that’s a worthwhile goal, but everyone pictures something different.
Compare that broad idea with something like, “close each client conversation by confirming the result and the next step.” Now people know what improvement looks like.
Before you decide someone “isn’t accountable,” ask four questions:
Outcome: What result are we responsible for?
Evidence: How will we know it happened?
Owner: Who is ultimately accountable?
Authority: What can they decide without asking?
If two reasonable people can look at the evidence and disagree about whether you achieved the desired outcome, you have an expectations problem. A performance system can’t fix unclear expectations.
Give each outcome one owner with authority
Many people can contribute, but final ownership works best with one name. A RACI chart comes in handy here. Every task gets:
At least one person who is Responsible
One person who is Accountable
One or more people who are Consulted
One or more people who are Informed
Let’s look at an example in a tax return workflow. The staff accountant gathers documents and prepares the draft, and the senior owns that outcome. The senior reviews the return, and the manager owns that review. The manager performs the final technical review, and the partner owns it. Everyone can see who answers for what.
Authority is just as essential as the name. People need to know how far they can go before they involve someone else. A simple Green, Yellow, Blue guide works well here.
Green: Go, you own the decision
Yellow: Pause and check the impact or involve others
Blue: Leadership decides
Accountability without authority produces escalation, waiting and workarounds. Ask where your team members carry accountability for outcomes they can’t influence.
Ownership also separates activity from accountability. “The committee met three times” describes activity. “Jane owns improving realization from 72% to 80% by June” describes accountability because it has an owner, a result and a date.
Measure fewer things, and check what your systems reward
People tend to follow the loudest signal, which doesn’t always match the strategic plan. What we say, what we measure, what we reward and what people do all send a message. When they contradict each other, behavior follows the reward.
Members of our Talent Circle recognized that their firms tell team members work-life balance and contributions beyond client work matter, yet evaluations still leaned heavily on chargeability. Now, they recognize recruiting, participation on an AI council and other contributions as equally important. Pick the contributions your strategic plan depends on and reward those.
Pair KPIs, which show the results you produce, with KBIs, which show the behavior that creates them. For example, a growth KPI might be new revenue from a target client segment. The KBI might be having two proactive conversations with target-segment prospects per partner per month. Partners can’t control revenue this week, but they can control those conversations.
Resist the urge to measure everything. We once worked with a small firm that tried to improve job expectations, bonuses, career progression, personal goals, performance measures and desired behaviors in a single balanced scorecard effort. Kaplan and Norton’s balanced scorecard gives you a useful way of looking across financial, customer, internal process and learning and growth results. But the value comes from connecting strategy, expectations, measures and behavior. The four boxes are only containers. Start with clear expectations and a few memorable measures. If you measure everything, nothing gets prioritized.
Build follow-through between meetings
Accountability happens between planning meetings. When something stalls, diagnose before you blame. A stalled initiative can hide at least six different problems:
Clarity: People don’t know what you expect
Ownership: No one really owns the outcome
Authority: The owner can’t make the needed decisions
Capacity: No realistic space exists to do the work
Priority: Other work always outranks it
Performance: The person had what they needed and still didn’t deliver
We often label all six as “accountability,” but each one needs a different fix. Only the last one calls for a performance conversation.
Members of our Process Circle felt the value of follow-through during software rollouts. In one member firm, team members volunteered for pilots and testing, then went back to the old process when client work picked up. That might seem like an accountability problem, until you realize the firm expected people to test on top of full workloads. One firm moved its go-live date instead of forcing the rollout into an unrealistic timeline. Before you start a performance conversation, check whether the person has the time to do what you asked.
Next, run the busy-season test. If a commitment works only when nobody is busy, it doesn’t work in an accounting firm. Decide whether you’ll protect the commitment so it continues as planned, scale it by reducing the cadence or behavior or move it by changing the deadline. Whichever you pick, decide on purpose and say it out loud. When a commitment just disappears, people think it never mattered.
Watch for rescuing, too. When leaders repeatedly step in to finish the work, they teach people that ownership is optional. Support is different. Replace status updates with a 15-minute accountability conversation that covers progress, evidence, barriers, decisions and commitments. Accountability conversations lead to decisions.
One firm in our Operations Circle eliminated timesheets for most of its service lines. Accountability remained because managers meet weekly with their teams to confirm deliverables are on track and scope is under control. The conversation checks whether the firm gets the result it wants: finished work delivered within scope.
Start with one initiative
Pick one initiative that should be further along than it is, and ask four questions:
Is the outcome clear?
Does one person own it, with enough authority to move it?
Do one or two measures show progress?
Will follow-through survive busy season?
Then choose one change, name the person you need to involve and set a real date. Schedule that conversation before you close your laptop. A clear next move on one initiative gives you enough to start.
Do you want to connect with other Operational Leaders in the accounting profession to become a more confident leader?
The Boomer Operations Circle is a peer group of Operational Leaders from successful and growing firms who work together to develop the best business strategies, plans and procedures. Apply now to start building valuable long-term relationships with others who are navigating the same challenges in shaping their firms for the future.
Arianna Campbell is the Chief Operating Officer at Boomer Consulting, Inc., where she helps CPA firms lead transformative change by aligning people, process, and leadership. A nationally recognized speaker and one of Accounting Today's Top 100 Most Influential People, she facilitates peer communities that shape the future of firm leadership and operations. When she’s not guiding change, Arianna is beach-hopping or volunteering with local nonprofits.
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