Accountability?

One of my biggest questions in life lately has been, "what has happened to accountability"? If you are someone's friend and you see them getting involved with something they shouldn't, wouldn't the right and normal thing to do would be to gently and with love, talk to your friend about it? Not go and tell another friend that you think your friend is doing something wrong and then never say anything to the friend that is in trouble. Why don't people address things directly? From experience, I've seen it happen over and over and over again and it just confuses me. I don't think that it makes you a bad person, but I do think that if you claim to be a best friend to someone you should feel comfortable enough talking with them about these things.
Why do we brag about being honest and then never approach problems/people/situations directly? We always tend to hear it from a friend that we have made someone upset , not directly from that person. This happens in every area of our life it seems...work, friendships, church, family. Every area and I don't think there are good reasons why this is. I guess I'm talking about two different things here, accountability and honesty...but they both lead back to just being honest with one another. Do good friends use the excuse, "it was none of my business"? That goes directly against what God tells us. If a friend thinks I am engaging in something I shouldn't, and they come to me in love, I will only appreciate that. You never know what you are going to say may change things drastically and prevent a lot of hurt of a lot of people. And also, what about standards and accountability in our churches? Of course every person is not perfect and will always mess up at some point, but do we act like if it isnt talked about, then we just won't have to deal with it? If people are able to keep things under wraps just enough, then we won't have to really hold them accountable because it will be like nothing ever really happened.

I am challenging myself to this also, to handle things more directly and to help hold my loved ones and friends accountable....I know they do the same for me. I don't know what I would do without my closest, loyals asking questions and making me really think about things that I just try to push back. They have helped hold me accountable in more ways than they realize. That's the type of friend and Christian I want to be.
Thanks for listening to my ramblings! :)