Actors of civil society operating in Kosovo understand the accountability in different ways. Accountability of the civil society is frequently reduced to financial transparency, but does not include the impact of policies or projects with beneficiaries or citizens in general.  Also, civil society activists understand accountability principle depending on the type and work of the organization. For example, accountability means more than financial transparency in cases when the requested funds were dedicated to a certain group, as the case may be with children with special needs, and in this case it is very important to account to the beneficiaries, families of those children, etc. While there are those that think that CSOs should be primarily accountable to the citizens because the civil society is an organized voice of the people, others think that demystification of accountability towards the people/citizens should occur, because the civil society did not originate in Kosovo and was not borne by the people but by a group of individuals that committed themselves to changing this country.

While some see it as a concept which is uniformly implemented, most estimate that in relation to accountability, the civil society should be categorized: service providers have a different degree of accountability in relation to advocacy, watchdog or anti-corruption organizations. Membership organizations do not need to be supervised by others since it is the members themselves who request that accountability, whereas CSOs that are not elected by anyone also enjoy the freedom to not necessarily account themselves to others. Accountability in relation to the citizen must be interlinked with cases when a CSO takes over a project that purports to provide change for a specific category, meaning on behalf of someone, then they should account to the citizens if such aimed change has been achieved.