The Accountability Gap: Why CEOs Need Checks & Balances

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Power Without Accountability: How to Avoid the CEO Trap

As I wrote for my recent op-ed in The New York Times about the pitfalls of founder mode, "Emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes. People who cannot manage themselves should not manage others." But as we all know, there are many people in positions of power who abuse it.

For instance, at too many companies, CEOs appoint board members specifically not to challenge their authority, not to hold them accountable . CEOs also sometimes hire HR people who will serve them rather than be real partners who can hold them accountable. When this happens, HR investigations can go badly off the rails.

However if a company has a board of directors, it is the board’s responsibility to hold the CEO accountable—it’s one of the reasons you have a board of directors in the first place.

For these situations, companies have a compliance function that should have a strong leader. The compliance function should report directly to the audit committee and can go around the CEO if needed. The internal audit function works the same way for the same reasons. If someone needs to report financial wrongdoing or discrimination or harassment, they need to be able to go around the CEO if the CEO is the problem.

This works better in public companies than it does in private ones. Dambisa Moyo, author of How Boards Work, explains that public corporations have far greater obligations—from all manner of stakeholders—for transparency and disclosures around forward-leaning social and cultural issues than privately held companies do.

For example, issues of gender diversity, pay parity , climate change, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors are all areas where public companies are subject to scrutiny and reporting whereas private institutions generally are not.

The issue here is that the people who have the most power—the people on the board of directors—are generally best positioned to dodge accountability . This puts HR in a terrible position unless the organizational structure is deliberately designed to limit the power of the CEO. The board of directors must hold the CEO accountable and have HR’s back.

Of course, many small businesses—bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, bodegas, and so on—don’t have a board of directors. The company I cofounded, Radical Candor? , has no board of directors. How can small business owners hold themselves accountable? A few things can help.

One is to appoint an ombudsperson whom people can go to with complaints. This ombudsperson needs to be someone who carries a lot of sway with the business owner—a mentor, for example—and who is willing to give a personal email address and phone number to all employees.

Another idea is to form a complaints committee: two or three employees who are generally trusted by the rank and file because they will not be afraid to bring problems to your attention.

These kinds of checks and balances are the only way to ensure you're continually optimizing for collaboration instead of coercion. They help you embody true leadership and resist the lure of authoritarianism.

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Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight?some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I'll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect , available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor? and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.