When an Al agent makes a mistake, someone will be asked who did it. Too often the answer is “the system.”

Organizations are handing more of their work to Al agents: systems that choose their own means, act in many steps and speak in the organization’s voice. In doing so they are separating two things that have always travelled together: doing the work, and answering for it.

Drawing on tribunal decisions, public inquiries and accident investigations, Youssef Ahmad Youssef shows how that separation is already being exploited, and argues that it cannot be repaired by treating agents as colleagues. Agents can do the work. They cannot answer for it. Accountability must be placed, deliberately, with people.

Accountable Agency offers leaders a practical design for the agentic organization: named owners, enforced limits, real review, honest measures, and the human judgements that must never be delegated.