Branded suspect and unaccountable in Banking Day in July, ANZ chair David Gonski has now made some effort to survey themes in the bank's still unpublished self-assessment supplied to APRA late last year.Writing in Bluenotes yesterday, Gonski said: "Let me emphasise at the outset the steps taken in recent years to simplify our business, combined with a stronger sense of our core purpose, ethics and fairness, have produced better outcomes for our customers, our shareholders and the community." "However, we recognise there have been instances where we have failed our customers. Where this has occurred we are determined to make things right as quickly as practicable. Significant resources and priority are being given to this task."There were many critical findings in our self-assessment across culture, accountability and governance. The Board and the executive team are determined to make the self-assessment an opportunity to deepen our self-awareness, actively learning from these failings."A few key areas are worth highlighting:"From a cultural perspective, we found a compliant culture with strong loyalty to teams - often at the expense of the broader group. There was also a greater focus on short-term fixes and what it meant to be 'customer-centric' lacked clarity and structure."Accountability for outcomes across ANZ, particularly in relation to inaction or poor performance, often lacked clarity below the senior executive level (which has been enhanced by the recent introduction of the Banking Executive Accountability Regime)."In relation to governance, we found fragmented infrastructures, drawn out processes and siloed teams. We also found aspects of non-financial risk management lacking maturity and our complexity impede swift action as well as increasing the reliance on informal networks."Another issue we identified has been a conditioned acceptance at ANZ that it's 'all too hard' or 'it's the way it's always been'."We have a culture where our teams do not always speak up. When permission or a process is ambiguous we can be conservative in our decision making. Often this leads to an outcome where we do nothing. This needs to change."Ends