Aboriginal people who work in government organisations often describe the difficulty they have with dual accountability.  They are talking about the conflict between accountability to an employer in relation to rules that are a condition of their employment, while at the same time being held accountable by the family and the community for behaving in ways that are expected by them.

Another sense of accountability which non-Aboriginal people frequently discuss is the notion of delivering on commitments.  This comes from their perception that Aboriginal people are notoriously unreliable.  All too often, however, Aboriginal people are prioritising and delivering on commitments, just not the ones that are understood or expected from a different cultural framework.

A third sense of accountability, which deserves attention in this context, is the one that relates to authority.  When people or groups have authority to make decisions, they can be held to account for the effects of these decisions by the people who gave them this authority.  The corollary of this is that people cannot be held accountable if they have no authority, or if they have insufficient authority to achieve the results required.