Accountability Requires Clear Expectations

Two businesswomen sitting at table and talking in office courtyardMake an effort to learn from your successes as well as your failures.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli
CPA Trendlines / Succession Institute

Accountability needs to be rooted in much more than a casual perception or it is destined to fail. Therefore, the first step to accountability is to move this from an “I will watch you and tell you if I think you are doing a good job” approach to one that clearly defines what you expect of someone up front.

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Now this sounds fairly straightforward, and it is, but it is also loaded with plenty of traps that you can fall into. One of the traps we want to avoid is ambiguity. You can overcome this trap by taking time to describe the expectations you have of someone, like: