AbstractNew public management ideals and standards have become increasingly adhered to in health professions education; this is particularly apparent in high-stakes assessment, as a gateway to practice. Using an Institutional Ethnographic approach, we looked at the work involved in running high-stakes Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs) throughout an academic year including use of observations, interviews and textual analysis. In our results, we describe three types of ‘work’—standardising work, defensibility work and accountability work–summarising these in the discussion as an Accountability Circuit, which shows the organising role of texts on people’s work processes. We show how this form of governance mandates a shift towards accountability-centred practices, away from practices which are person-centred; this lens on accountability-centring during high-stakes assessments invites critique of the often-unquestioned emphasis of new public management in health professions education.