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This article of exploratory research provides a critical perspective on accountability, focusing on three characteristics: transparency, asymmetry and individual agency. An experimental method is developed, calling for an ethics of accountability.

Four entrepreneurs have given accounts of themselves and their projects in life cycle interviews. This article applies Devereux's approach (1967), which allows for opacity (the “unconscious”) to oneself and to others with symmetry between analysts and analysed, and a lack of demarcation between the observer and the observed.

A tragic entrepreneurial accountability trap of continuous self-justification was discovered, which pertains both to the entrepreneurs and the researchers. Nonetheless, the researchers as inspired by Devereux's method were able to realize a form of accounterability.

This article shows that the demands for transparent, asymmetrical and agentive accountability call for ethical reflection. The request for accounts, as resulting in the accounts given and the research conducted into accountability, are all sources of constraints. Differing the accountability situation may lessen the constraints.

This study introduces Devereux's method as an investigative tool in accountability research, opening up new perspectives on communication and analysis. This article shows the researcher as situated both inside and outside of the accountability mechanisms. This article explores a singular form of accountability; that of entrepreneurs who seemingly only account for the future, thereby disconnecting them from others.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the case of General Guillaume-Henri Dufour may offer useful ideas for the development of responsible leadership in military ethics. Military ethics is a field of growing importance. And in the military profession, leadership is particularly valued. The systematic and continuing production of leaders at all levels is a constant task of military forces in any country, and the need for leaders who are responsible and ethical is not only desirable, but also essential – as a variety of ethical failures have shown us.

Guillaume-Henri Dufour was a decorated soldier serving Switzerland as a general, who founded a military academy and trained others in the military sciences, who served as a politician, and who contributed noted achievements in the fields of cartography and civil engineering. A short sketch of his life is provided, and then focus turns to two specific occasions: the Sonderbund War and the agreement for the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.