Nurturing culture of accountability

Thomas Hidya Tjaya, Lecturer, Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta

Each profession involves the fulfillment of specific tasks and duties. Teachers must educate students, and physicians must cure their patients. That's how human society is organized. As management expert Abraham Maslow argues, at the core of human existence lies our needs for physical and psychological survival, belonging to a community, love from other human beings, a sense of self-worth, and actualization of our creative beings.

To meet these basic needs, we have long constructed certain mechanisms, particularly by allocating the responsibility to specific professional groups. Hence, we have professionals such as physicians, attorneys, psychologists, clerics, teachers, etc.

The professionals in these groups are respected and acknowledged as vital to our individual and collective welfare. We accord them an elevated status, which reflects the importance of our needs. We also grant them the authority to perform their jobs. We let, for instance, the physician and the nurse touch our bodies to check our vital signs or provide medical treatment. We disclose our inner lives to psychologists and clerics, which we wouldn't willingly do, unless in the belief that it will produce a better life for us. We are conditioned to comply with their directives; we are taught that our cooperation is necessary if we are to fully receive something from them.

Though somewhat unusual, I would also include politicians among the professionals insofar as they gain trust from the people to take care of the needs of society. Periodically we hold general elections to select from among the available candidates those whom we deem worthy and credible enough to lead our countries.

Once elected, they will be our leaders whose subsequent decisions and decrees we, often grudgingly, have to put up with, until the next election. As with other professionals, we believe, or at least we want to believe, that politicians will place the needs of the people ahead of their own. That's the main reason for our complying with their instructions and decisions.

But what if the professionals fail in their tasks and duties? What if they abuse the trust we have given them for their own personal advantage? What are we to do if they make mistakes or commit errors in performing their duties? This is the area in which the ethics of responsibility must be inculcated among professionals. The trust given demands responsibility on the part of the recipients of the trust.

To assess the degrees of professional responsibility, we need to distinguish between at least three forms of error that they can commit. First, technical error. This entails the failure to perform the tasks characteristic to the profession. For instance, if an aspiring teacher turns out to be unable to teach at all, we may wonder whether teaching is a suitable job for this person. A doctor who fails to perform basic surgery on a patient may be considered incompetent for the job. In this regard, these people have committed technical errors.

Characteristic to technical errors is the failure to acquire the skills necessary for the performance of the related work. Due to the lack of such skills, the professional is deemed incompetent for the job. The remedy for this type of error is the acquisition of expertise. It is incumbent upon the professional to (re-)learn the skills needed for the adequate performance of the work.

Once such an error is committed, the person may or may not be given the chance to continue performing the job. But in any case, he or she must assume the responsibility for the error and must see to it that such a blunder is avoided in the future.

Second, error of judgment. This form of error involves the failure to make a good judgment on a situation that is related to the professional's work. Several professional fields such as medicine, psychology, and even politics require subtle decisions often made upon intuition rather than exact calculation.

When the victims of dengue virus were on the rise a couple of months ago, we heard stories of patients whose illness was misdiagnosed by doctors. As a result, a good many of them died without receiving proper treatment.

A similar error also occurs in the political world. Politicians are often faced with extremely difficult situations that require sound judgment. Governance is indeed an art, and not based on exact mathematical calculations. It is a matter of making good decisions given the circumstances. The failure to make a good judgment, either due to a lack of information or to self-interest, can easily result in bad decisions.

This can happen despite a politician's best intentions, not to mention when a politician prostrates himself to self-interest. Accidental or not, this type of error, of course, demands that they be held accountable to a certain extent. They may be regarded as lacking the intellectual capacity or adequate information for making good judgments, or perhaps they are psychologically incapable of doing so, depending on the circumstances.

Third, moral error. This form of error entails a deliberate commission of morally wrong actions or a failure to intervene in crimes against fellow human beings. When a physician knowingly forces the patient to undergo unnecessary surgery simply so he can make more money even though the illness can be properly treated with medication, this professional is commiting a moral error. The reason is that he or she is denigrating the dignity of human beings by placing their fundamental interests beneath his or her personal (and material) needs.

In politics, instances of this type of error are abundant. Governments often unscrupulously disregard morality when it comes down to protecting the status quo, or deliberately shut their eyes to human rights violations when their vested interests would be at stake if they decided to intervene. This form of error is considered the gravest among the three because the agent knowingly performs the action, or has the resources to prevent the crimes from happening or continuing but does nothing.

In our daily lives we see both the successes and failures of all these professionals. While we may praise their achievements, we may also call for some sort of accountability when they fail to do their jobs. Insofar as their professions require certain expertise and they have been given trust to perform their jobs, they should be held accountable for any failures.

Physicians commiting malpractice, politicians failing to live up to the promises they make at election time, or making morally wrong decisions, other professionals not living up to the standard expectations of the people they serve -- all these must be subject to such scrutiny. In the particularly case of Indonesian politics, we see too many figures who were involved in human rights abuses and other crimes, and yet get away scot-free. What makes it worse is that we tend to forget these violations too quickly and never bother to demand justice.

In the end, public demands for accountability and credible trials would teach us all the lesson that professionals, including politicians, are responsible for the trust given to them by the people they serve.