Critical risks (associated with major hazards) can often be seen as a complex set of problems that seem to be unrelated and can result in boards, executives and senior managers being overwhelmed and exposed as the business struggles to address its issues across many competing risk priorities.So how can we manage this? Firstly, an organisation must identify and understand the critical risks that the business is exposed to. The concept of risk lends itself to the Pareto principle, which helps a business to focus on what matters. That is; 80% of a business risk profile is related to 20% of its risks (i.e. the critical few). Given this, it is appropriate for a business to focus on the critical few rather than the trivial many and to drill down deep into the causal pathway of these critical few to ensure that effective controls are implemented.We must then understand the organisations (including the boards, executives and senior managers) appetite for effectively managing these critical few risks.The appetite for managing these critical few risks is a function of the organisations culture driven by the strength of management to manage risk and we must understand what motivates (or demotivates) the board, executive, senior managers and employees to implement (or not) the relevant system requirements including activation of the critical controls when required.The process of effectively managing critical risk is twofold: 1) Define the major hazards, assess the risks, develop the controls and implement them; and 2) Build accountability for these controls to codify effectiveness that is equivalent to accepted business accountabilities such as production, share market performance and profit. The safety performance of an organization must become an On Time Running Factor (OTRF) and have a consequence for failure.When management and boards are truly held to account for the effectiveness of these controls, then organisations have an opportunity to develop a culture that will enable a business to effectively mitigate and manage its risk profile and optimise its business performance and consequently optimise value. CITATION:Head, D L and Masciangioli, A M, 2019. Focusing on the critical few risks ensuring control effectiveness through accountability, in Proceedings Iron Ore 2019, pp 529536 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).