Accountability: The Radical Act We Need in 2026

As the year comes to a close, it’s natural to look back at the landscape we’ve travelled over the last twelve months. And honestly? 2025 has been a bit of a shit show. Nationally, globally, personally—for many of us.

As a therapist, that gets me thinking. It’s one thing for some people to have a rough year, but when we start to see a downward trend in wellbeing, balance, and resilience, something deeper is going on. Something systemic. Something upstream.

And I’ve always been an “upstream” kind of person. Don’t keep pulling drowning people out of the river - go up the bank and see who’s pushing them in.

Which is why accountability is going to be my buzzword of 2026.

In a culture defined by call-outs, cancellations, and chronic defensiveness, accountability feels strangely absent. I’d even argue that the simple act of saying sorry feels radical now.

We tend to swing between two extremes: shame and avoidance. We shame, blame, shout, or ghost. What we rarely do is the thing that actually transforms behaviour - hold people (and ourselves) accountable.

Shame says, “You are bad.”

Accountability says, “Something you did caused harm, and you can do better.”

Shame shuts people down; accountability opens a path to change. Shame isolates; accountability reconnects. Shame is final; accountability is reparative.

The issue with accountability is that it requires vulnerability—and if we’re honest, we’re not very good at that. It forces us to hold up a mirror. We can’t call others out without acknowledging our own failings, and that disrupts the magical idea that we’re supposed to be perfect. In a culture obsessed with being right, healthy self-reflection is a radical act.

Why does this matter globally?

We are increasingly electing and elevating people who cannot tolerate being wrong - leaders who, when criticised, lash out with anger, denial, or deflection. And this matters. When people in power can’t take responsibility, it sets a cultural tone: accountability becomes weakness, and blame becomes strategy.

And the ripple effect is huge. When those in power refuse responsibility, it sends a message to the rest of society: mistakes are to be hidden, errors punished, honesty dismissed. Shame doesn’t just hit the person responsible, it spreads, infecting conversations, workplaces, families, and communities. Without accountability, the cultural tone becomes one of fear, defensiveness, and isolation. No one learns. No one grows. Everyone loses.

That structural dysfunction can make accountability impossible - reinforcing cycles of denial, defensiveness, and public distrust.

So what do I mean when I talk about accountability?

It isn’t punishment. It isn’t humiliation. It isn’t digging up every past wrongdoing and performing endless atonement.

True accountability is understanding what is yours to hold - and what isn’t. It’s the process of rupture and repair. It’s saying, “Hey, I fucked up there, but I’m willing to put in the time and understanding to repair it.” It’s responding to conflict with empathy rather than panic. It’s knowing that responsibility is a path to self-respect, not self-doubt.

Accountability reminds us - and everyone around us - that we never stop growing. That we are more than the sum of our mistakes. When accountability is present, shame loses its grip. Compassion enters. Repair becomes possible. People become reachable again.

So maybe, just maybe, by changing one simple thing in the structure of our society, we can move onto a path of repair rather than sitting in the rubble of the fractures 2025 left behind.

Accountability leads to healthier public discourse. It replaces fear with responsibility, perfectionism with humanity, and shame with compassion.

Maybe if we all made it our resolution in 2026, the landscape a year from now might feel a little lighter, a little kinder, and a lot more hopeful.