This article examines the accounts of teacher educators on their experiences with a professional accreditation process through the multi-focal lens of professional responsibility, accountability, survival and coping strategies. The findings reveal that teacher educators operate on the premise that they live out their professional responsibility in ways consistent with the complexity and ambiguity inherent in democratic, deliberative decision-making. They argue that teacher educators must be more articulate about the purposes a process of increased explicitness and the logic of accountability actually serve, and what the less tangible moral dimensions of responsibility contribute to the discourses of reform.