Commercial detector-grade cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) crystals still suffer from various types of extended defects, e.g., dislocations, micro-grains, grain boundaries, and Te-rich secondary phases. Most of these defects cannot readily be identified and characterized using conventional techniques, though they are believed to be the dominant factor causing non-uniformity in the detector response. In this work, we revealed and characterized these secondary-phase defects in CZT crystals by employing multiple advanced techniques, e.g. X-ray diffraction topography, micro-scale X-ray response mapping, chemical etching and infrared microscopy. We then evaluate the detector performance of the crystals by recording high spatial-resolution raster scans of the charge collection and spectral response. We directly correlated the influence of the secondary-phase defects on the performance of the detector responses. The experimental results exhibit clear evidence of the undesirable effects of extended defects on the performance of commercial CZT radiation detectors. Published by Elsevier B.V.