Research on psychological safety is often summarized as a license to speak without fear of embarrassment. That summary understates the original claim. Safety, as studied in clinical and aviation teams, is a shared belief that interpersonal risk will not be punished when it is taken in service of the work: reporting an error, questioning a plan, admitting ignorance. It is not a general amnesty for poor performance. Teams that score high on safety still set standards; they separate the person from the process so that a near-miss can be examined without first assigning blame. Managers who collapse the distinction treat candor as optional culture and accountability as a later HR process, then wonder why incident reports dry up. The harder design problem is sequencing: if accountability is imposed before a team has any evidence that speaking up is survivable, silence is the rational response. If safety is cultivated with no subsequent standard, the team may generate discussion without decisions. Effective groups therefore treat the two as complements in time, not as rivals in a single meeting.