You’re totally right here. People want accountability because they want to increase honesty, which is obviously a worthy goal. But sometimes it backfires.

If I’m going to be held to account for everything I say in a meeting, I will be more careful about what I say and how I say it. That sounds like a good thing. But I think out loud. I voice opinions that I don’t necessarily hold to encourage others to voice theirs in a free-thinking conversation. People’s immediate feedback allows me to rapidly change my thoughts - asking for short bits of feedback is normal verbally, but laborious in writing. Also, when writing, I self-censor ideas because they sound wrong - but someone might have taken inspiration from one of those wrong ideas and corrected it.

The best medium in which to have a conversation thus depends on the participants, context and intent of that conversation.