FBC – 314 – The relationship between fault and responsibility

Today, I am going to tell you a story (and rant) to illustrate the link between fault and responsibility. In addition we are going to talk about the kind of people you need to stay away from in order to keep your sanity.

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So this morning I woke up very tired. But then my first interaction was with someone who put me in a really, really bad mood. I want to tell you about it. And maybe you can make sense of it.

There's this person who needs to organize an event here in Bali. And I was asked by a friend to help. I'm more than happy to help out. But that's it. Don't put that on me. I don't know the first thing about creating an event.

So, you know, I met with this person and I started asking questions. I'm like, OK, so, um, so what's the budget for the event? Because basically you need to find a place for the event. Oh, there is no budget like zero.

How many people are expected? Uh, I don't know. Well, how many people realistically do they want at the event? Uh, I don't know. Well, the people that need to present something, do they need a screen or something like that? I don't know.

OK, the point I'm actually trying to make here is this. If in the beginning you weren't given the information, then it's on whoever hired you to do the job. Right? It's on them. They need to give you the information.

So at that point, you know, I go out and I help this person out because the venue they found is the worst possible venue on the planet. I don't understand. There is some common sense here. This is not a venue, right? You can't get people there. So let's go and try to find something else. So I drive that person around. We go to a bunch of different places and I find one.

So I cancel a dinner with some of my friends to go and drive that person around. I'm helping. Right. It's not my problem. I'm helping out. So we get there, we see a ballroom like a meeting room and stuff. It's really cool. And so I ask, well, can you give us the contact of the marketing guy or whoever, and then we can contact this person? So from there they just have to contact that person. It's going to go just fine.

There's still a lot of things that are unknown, the number of people that are going to come because that person is going to ask how many people are you expecting and stuff like that. If you want to cut some sort of deal, you need to be able to tell them how many people are there. So I'm asking, well, how many people do they actually have at the other events that they're organizing?

So you can have some sort of realistic number. But there is no information. So I decide to intervene and actually help out. So I send a message on a group just saying, well, can you please help us out with this information? So the dude on the other side is like, yeah, yeah give me the questions, I'll answer them.

What annoys me is that the person here in Bali that I’ve been asked to help, has never asked any of those questions!

So today I'm like, well did you call the venue that I took it you with? Oh no I didn't do it.  I was busy with blah blah. So I'm like, well, it's your job to organize this thing. It's not mine. And so the person is like blaming me now. Oh, well, instead of helping me, you're telling me that I should ask questions. I'm like, well yeah. Because it's your job.

The relationship between fault and responsibility

So my point is that in the beginning, if you weren't given the information, at that point it's on you. If you don't have the information, it's on you. You had the chance to ask it. So don't be like, oh, man, I don't know this. It's. Your fault, its nobody else's fault. It's your responsibility. You have to ask those questions.

And then I realized that in the end today, I was told that, no, there is actually a budget. But there always was a budget. So what did you have me jump through hoops for? Something that's not even my problem, telling me that there is zero budget, which makes it hard to find anything when there was a budget.

So now I don't actually know what to believe in terms of like communication. Is this person just not communicating with the actual organizers and just telling me B.S. or is this the actual information that's coming from the organizers?

So basically the person that I’ve asked to help doesn’t have any skills and actually needed someone to do it all so that she didn’t have to. So she needs to learn those skills if she wants to be in this line of work.

And how do you learn? If you have a mentor, the mentor points you in the right direction, which I did, I said, look, you don't know how to promote this thing. Let me make sure that you can ask directly to whoever knows. Remember what I told you? The best skill to have is to know who to ask. So I give that person a direct line to the people who actually do that for a living. And I said, just ask them how they do it.

I'm trying to get that person to understand this. It will be on you regardless if in the beginning they put you in some impossible situation and blah, blah, blah, nobody will care. It will fall on you. So you better cover your ass and make sure you've asked everything you could to make sure to set the right expectations and make sure that whatever people expect wherever they're traveling from. I mean, people are coming from the US right now.

It's just basic, it's just logic. I'm trying to help out and you know, dealing with these people, they are the victims and it’s always someone else's fault. This person can't actually understand or conceive that, well, you know, there is a responsibility there.

It May Not Be Your Fault, But It Is Still Your Responsibility To Fix

Fault and responsibility get confused constantly, and that confusion keeps people stuck. Fault is about the past, about who caused the mess. Responsibility is about the future, about who is going to do something about it. You can be completely blameless for your situation and still be the only person who can change it. I wasted years waiting for the people who caused my problems to come fix them, and they never did, because it was not their problem anymore. The moment I stopped assigning blame and started taking responsibility, everything moved.

So drop the argument about whose fault it is, it changes nothing. Ask the only question that matters, what am I going to do now. That single shift turns you from a victim of your circumstances into the person in charge of them. I explain how ownership rebuilt my life on my story page, and I go deeper on the mindset on my Freedom by Choice podcast. On why taking ownership predicts who recovers and who stays stuck, Harvard Business Review has covered it for years, and the founder stories in the Stripe Atlas guides show ownership turning nothing into something.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between fault and responsibility in business?

Fault is who created the problem. Responsibility is who is expected to solve it. Martin Ebongue makes the distinction after an event-planning request landed on him with zero budget and zero information. The lesson is that accepting responsibility for something is not the same as accepting blame for it.

Why do clients often blame contractors for missing information they never provided?

Because once a contractor agrees to help, ownership of the outcome shifts in the client's mind. Martin warns that without a clear written scope, any gap in initial information becomes the contractor's problem to fix, even when the original failure was caused entirely by the client's own preparation.

How should you respond when something becomes your responsibility but is not your fault?

Reset expectations in writing before doing any work. Martin's approach is to document what was missing, what the new scope requires, and what the realistic timeline now looks like. This protects both sides and stops the contractor from absorbing penalties for the client's original oversight.

What boundaries should consultants set with clients to prevent unfair blame?

Require a written brief covering budget, audience size, technical needs, and success criteria before quoting. Martin treats this as non-negotiable. Consultants who skip the brief end up doing twice the work for half the fee, because every undefined detail becomes their problem to solve at the last minute.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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