It is easy to fake a learning culture. Much, much more difficult to achieve it.
“Do we want to emphasize learning or accountability?”
“I expect both,” the CEO replied, firmly. Conversation over.
But it couldn’t end there. Stopping at that answer only reinforces a common and costly misconception: that organizations can fully prioritize both learning and accountability at once. I pushed back.
“We can’t have both—not fully. We have to choose.”
That’s not a popular opinion, but it’s an important one. Many leaders aim for a culture where employees grow from mistakes while still being held accountable for them. But research is clear: when mistakes carry consequences, people stop learning. Fear shuts down not only candor, but even to quietly recognize our own mistakes.
It’s Already an Uphill Battle
One of my favorite book titles is Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). Authors Tavris and Aronson detail the many ways our brains protect our egos. These natural defenses make it hard for us to learn from failure—especially when we don’t believe we’re at fault.
Worse still, these defenses become stronger the more intelligent we are. As journalist David Robson explores in The Intelligence Trap, smarter individuals tend to craft more sophisticated excuses. We rationalize. We spin. We avoid blame—even from ourselves.
And Then We Make It Worse
Now add professional risk—damaged reputations and missed promotions—and the desire to hide or spin failures becomes overwhelming. Even lessons from successes get buried when people don’t want to admit luck played a role or are able to spin imperfect outcomes.
The Dangerous Middle Ground
Executives often try to “split the difference”—softening consequences slightly to encourage sharing. But this trade-off isn’t linear. Even at modest levels of accountability, organizational learning doesn’t just decline—it plummets. The exhibit illustrates the tradeoff of losing the benefits of learning faster than gaining the benefits of accountability.
At moderate accountability, ego defenses have already largely crippled insightful reflection and fear has shut down candor.
Creating a Learning Culture
There’s no universal solution… not even a perfect trade-off point between organizational learning and accountability. In high-stakes environments where decision quality matters, investing in a genuine learning culture pays off. Here’s how to build one:
- Set Clear Expectations
Define the organization’s commitment to learning. Encourage sharing of lessons from both success and failure, while clearly drawing lines for unacceptable actions (e.g., legal violations).
- Provide Training
Teach people how to recognize and overcome their ego defenses. Help them accept and process feedback without defensiveness.
- Model the Culture (Yes, You)
Leaders must go first—owning their missteps and inviting critique. This is the hardest part (recall lessons from The Intelligence Trap), but without it, trust cannot grow.
- Reward Courageous Candor
Celebrate those who share tough lessons or admit to being wrong—especially when it helps others learn. Make this visible in promotion decisions.
- Provide Safety Nets
Sometimes, repeated errors reveal a poor job fit. But if someone has shown openness and contributed valuable insights, treat them with fairness and support their move to a better fit in the organization.
- Practice Patience
Learning to be open takes time. Trusting leadership with “dangerous” transparency builds slowly. When a leader reacts poorly to candor (and you inevitably will), they must own that mistake and correct it publicly and quickly to avoid undoing progress.
Final Thought: Learning or Accountability?
I favor building a learning culture—but I know it’s not always the right call. If you choose accountability over learning, just remain aware: you will miss insights you will never even know existed. That cost is invisible and high—under-performing future opportunities and wasted resources.
Strategic Bets 