Accountability is an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for ones actions. Now for the Army, it becomes an obligation more than“willingness” while you have to be willing to do it as well. Those that are unable to be accountable are the ones that jeopardize the combat readiness of any unit. Basically it is the understanding that from the bottom up. Top down and laterally everyone is going to do and is willing to do the right thing even when no one else is looking. This is practiced at your home base where everyone is assigned tasks and details not only including your own job that you are expected to do and do right but hold others accountable as well as a system of “check yourself, then check your buddy.” Doing the job correctly and ensuring others do it as well and do it safely are all part of accountability in the military as one does not have to experience combat to understand that just being in the military is inherently dangerous given the types of equipment and weapons that are used to train and deploy with. As an example any live weapons range you go to part of the safety brief is “everyone here is a range safety” meaning anyone can call a cease fire if they observe dangerous behavior or a situation regardless of rank and it can be a Colonel or a brand new private, does not matter. As such in that event everyone becomes accountable not only for the operation of the range, the mission objective to have everyone qualify but do it in a safe manner as well. When I used to teach this class I would use this analogy:
In Germany in order to obtain an operators permit or drivers license everyone must go through six months of driver education as well as pay what is I believe today is around three thousand dollars to include any vehicle on the road must pass a state inspection which is far from a cursory look at the fenders. Now with that they take driving and safety very seriously given the open ended speeds on many of the autobahns but...