# An Accountability Mechanism Reaches Its Role and No Further ## Claim A governing body can act on the position it governs while leaving untouched every other role the same person holds, and nothing automatically extends a mechanism across that gap. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - A board restraining a CEO is evidence the board works, and simultaneously evidence of the gap wherever the same person holds authority no comparable body reaches. - The gap is visible in advance: list each role and name the body that could remove the person from it. Roles with no answer are the exposure. - Applies to any person holding roles across a company, a nonprofit, and a project, which is common in open source. - Does not imply bad faith by anyone — it is a property of how governing bodies are scoped. ## Evidence From Computerworld's analysis of the Automattic leadership change: the board's action over the CEO role is contrasted with the roles it does not reach. ## Links - [[Concentration Risk Is a Property of the Structure Not the Officeholder]] — the structural measurement this note supplies the method for - [[Verify Who Owns the Infrastructure Before Believing an Independence Claim]] — the same audit run against ownership rather than against removal power - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Open Source Governance MOC]] — the governance thread on where accountability stops.