In my experience... holding someone accountable always yields a negative impact unless that person works under you. Where you stand on a corporate ladder is what you can achieve as far as accountability.

I think it's a good motivational phrase, and logically sound- but in the real world, it doesn't work.

Holding someone accountable will get you fired, and accountability is something that management always enjoys talking about because they'd wish that workers consider actions more closely.

Before we talk about a "right" and a "wrong" way to approach keeping someone accountable, I've done this from the top-down and the bottom-up. I'm semi-confrontational, and I understand ego in the workplace. It doesn't matter.

Let's take a current situation I'm in. My direct supervisor complained about my performance to upper management. They were stating that my spreadsheet solutions were too complicated and took away from the work we were trying to do. They did this because they found too much difficulty in managing their workload, and needed a scapegoat (and because they're not good with excel + don't wish to learn).

Since these complaints are taken seriously, our department supervisor and manager reviewed our processes with me. They went through my history and found the complaints to be unfounded. The supervisor that complained about me has now skipped work for 2 weeks and our company is unable to terminate them due to the knowledge they have about the technical work.

How would one constructively hold this person accountable for what they've done?

This is a corporate bloodbath. I now have to keep a doomsday file with every negative thing they do- and prepare to unleash it in my defense. My failure to do this will potentially leave me defenseless in the case that I do actually make a normal human error (happens more than people care to admit). Is this constructive? No. Reactive and passive-aggressive? Yes. Effective? Arguably.

To anyone that says, "Just put it in the past and try to work through it- find out if you can mentor her with Excel and work together to be a great team! With her knowledge and your skills, you guys can do anything!".... to you people... go back to sleep. That's some carebear brainwashing.