The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s a corporate ethics story with a (mildly) misleading headline: “Boeing CEO raises ethics bar”

The story is about Boeing’s CEO, Jim McNerney, who’s been on the job just over a year now, and has, to his credit, steered the scandal-prone company along the straight-and-narrow.

[McNerney] has done something his two predecessors couldn’t manage: steer the company clear of ethics controversy and lessen the whiff of scandal that has surrounded it for several years.

“At the one-year point, Jim McNerney’s contribution has mainly been in returning credibility to the corporate office,” said Peter Jacobs, an analyst for Ragen MacKenzie in Seattle. “He has raised the ethical bar and put into place things to prevent some of the misdeeds of the past.”

It’s pretty telling when managing to do things like avoid defrauding the US government and avoiding involvement in sex scandals garners a CEO credit for “raising the bar.” I’m not trying to downplay Mr. McNerney’s achievements, but I think a more modest metaphor would be more appropriate, like “Keeping Your Nose Clean” or “Colouring Inside the Lines” or maybe “Keeping Your Hands Out of the Cookie Jar.”

Relevant Books:
The Story of the Boeing Company
Inside Boeing: Building the 777
Boeing Boeing (the 1965 movie, starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis)