Accountability Means Counting People In

 

Ethical Leadership

Accountability, at its simplest, means an ability to count people in.

Not count them out. Not guess who might turn up. Not wait to be told. But a conscious willingness to think in numbers—who is represented, who is excluded, and who is impacted—by the decisions your organisation makes.

As a leader—whether you’re a CEO, trustee, director, or team lead—ethical accountability means being able to estimate, roughly but responsibly, who will be affected by your strategy, policies, and everyday decisions.

Let’s say your organisation has 100 employees. Statistically:

• Around 12 will be disabled people,
• 4 may identify as LGBTQ+,
• 10 will face racism,
• 46 are likely to come from a working-class background.

You do not need individuals to declare these identities for you to take action. You don’t need a headcount to justify a ramp, a carers’ policy, flexible working hours, or decent anti-discrimination training. These should not be luxuries awarded based on personal likeability, confidence, or the strength of someone’s voice. Ethical leadership doesn’t wait for special requests. It works to remedy structural inequality, irrespective of who is “brave enough” or “senior enough” to ask.

Good leaders know how to listen—but great leadership action requires knowingmhow to count.

statistics that are a few clicks away will tell you how many people, from which groups, are likely to be engaging with your organisation—staff, service users, audience members, or customers. That knowledge lets you plan with care.

Say you’re hosting an event. On Tuesdays, your “Aqua Fit” programme brings in an extra 100 visitors, many of whom are older or disabled. That means you don’t schedule a chair pilates session at the same time. It means parking needs to be on offer and quiet spaces may be more necessary than usual. If you’ve planned with access in mind, people won’t need to declare or apologise for existing.

When you're operating at a strategic level, it's about percentages—not personal disclosures. People’s identities remain private. Your job is to make inclusion public.

To be truly accountable, you must count people in with care—ensuring that all groups within your reach are served equitably. It is not ethical, for example, to support older people better than disabled people just because their needs are more visible or socially palatable. That classic excuse, “We don’t have any disabled customers—we’re on the top floor,” tells you everything. The problem isn’t the absence of people in wheelchairs. It’s the absence of welcome.

Disability isn’t always visible. Just because someone doesn’t ask for accommodation doesn’t mean they don’t need it. Several n people with hidden conditions might already be accessing your service—quietly, uncomfortably, and without complaint. That doesn’t let the organisation off the hook. Ethical accountability means preparing as though you ŵere already trusted to do the right thing.

When strategic planning is weak, operational exclusion creeps in. That’s what we call a legitimacy gap: when your organisation claims inclusion but doesn’t deliver.

That’s why every leadership programme should include meaningful, up-to-date equality and diversity training. Not because it’s a tick-box, but because the human experience is vast. None of us can know what we’ve never lived. Without structured learning, blind spots become harmful policies.

If we don't sim to reach the Black or brown populations who should statistically appear in my organisation—then they won't. Their absence is not random. It’s the result of choices made, messages sent, and spaces that failed to prepare.

Ethical accountability doesn’t wait to be corrected. It plans to be inclusive, from the start. It knows the numbers. It counts people in.

This government is abdicating accountability by refusing to serve the disabled population—equitably, fairly, or without prejudice. This failure appears rooted in a chilling assumption: that disabled people must payfor their own inclusion to be considered worthy of basic dignity. As if human rights were conditional on economic contribution, rather than guaranteed by our shared humanity.