Accountability Comparability Barrier: When Institutional Architectures Prevent Cross-Pathway Coherence

Accountability systems can produce real corrective actions while remaining structurally incomparable across institutional pathways. This note introduces Accountability Comparability Barrier (ACB-B) — a structural condition in which a publicly unified failure event generates stratified visibility pathways that cannot be externally synchronized. The result is not impunity and not inequality of punishment. It is the architectural absence of a comparability surface: a layer that would make consequences across pathways readable as responses to the same event. Two anchor cases instantiate the geometry — U.S. Navy disciplinary architecture and Wells Fargo (2016). The mechanism status of ACB-B remains candidate. This note documents the geometry and the explanatory object, not a confirmed causal claim.