Boeing has made much publicly about its supposed ethics reforms "post Boeing CFO Sears and Druyun." But the average Boeing employee still does not know whether to laugh or cry when thinking of the state of Boeing's ethics. That is what I observed at Boeing before my termination for trying to terminate what is perhaps the most serious of the illegalities Boeing still is willingly performing, openly or not. I put the "post Boeing CFO Sears and Druyun" Ethics program to the test, so to speak, when I attempted to use it to protect me from further harrassment and retaliation after I reported these illegalities to the FAA and Boeing Headquarters and both corrupt organizations refused to take any real action to stop this fraud. I contacted the "Boeing Ethics" (an oxymoronic name of an organization if there ever was one) department on two occasions after two incidents by Boeing managers--one of assault and further threats of bodily harm to me and threats to fire me if I did not end my ethic of being "the last inspector" at Boeing and begin to rollerstamp work off as acceptable without the required inspection to see if the airplane components were acceptable or not. Both of these events with multiple witnesses came back from "Boeing Ethics" as "unsubstantiated," and therefore the Boeing managers were free to continue their unethical actions against me. In the case where I had a huge airplane component rammed against me, and the manager of the shop stating that that is what happened to inspectors who did not "work with shop," Boeing Ethics would not even explain the reason why they chose to deem it "unsubstantiated," which is a violation of "Boeing Ethics" investigation procedures, I believe ("working with shop" is a common term for "does not rollerstamp" at Boeing. I treated everyone in the shop I inspected the work of with respect, being the only inspector I knew of that thanked mechanics for letting me be of service to them after witness torques and other inspections by saying "thanks," and had positive relationships with shop personnel where we would frequently exchange jovial banter. The few relationships where shop personnel did not return my respectful treatment of them was when they resented the fact I would not rollerstamp their work off like other inspectors did.) In the other case, Boeing Ethics investigators had to go to great lengths in stretching the truth to try and justify their "unsubstantiated" claim--any impartial observer would have seen the intentional error in their "logic" in closing the case as unsubstantiated and doing nothing. The case being deemed "Unsubstantiated," was always a forgone conclusion, as the complaint was against my QA supervisor who told me the unethical and illegal "facts of inspector rollerstamping life at Boeing" on 1/11/02. As Boeing Headquarters had chosen to overlook his illegal acts in that case when I reported it to them, Boeing Ethics could not validate another such act by the same supervisor and institute sanctions against him, as that would make their planned use of him in any trial to likely lie that the 1/11/02 meeting never occurred or was about something completely different than it was about more unbelievable than it would be otherwise.

Although "Boeing Ethics" would not act despite multiple witnesses in each case, I did learn some important facts myself during these two investigations.

The first fact is that there is a double standard in the unethical "Boeing Ethics" department. Boeing management is essentially given a "bulletproof vest" in ethics "investigations" against them by the "Ethics" department, while non-management personnel are considered expendable and not thusly given protection against their unethical actions like Boeing management are, no matter how egregious the actions of Boeing management happen to be.

Employees of any level can have unethical and illegal actions by Boeing management corrected only if they have a recording or email or other evidence not able to be covered up by "Boeing Ethics" personnel of the manager's illegal or unethical conduct. This lets management intentionally off the hook in most cases. For non-management personnel, Ethics investigations don't require such an impossible burden of proof (as recording unethical management conduct at Boeing is illegal, and will surely get you fired), and witness statements can be used to discipline an employee.

What makes this defacto policy of "Boeing Ethics" much more puzzling is that Boeing managers, per Boeing's own policies, are supposed to be held to a higher standard, not a lesser one, as the above shows.

Cases in point: CEO Stonecipher only was sanctioned after someone sent Boeing Headquarters emails anonymously of "inappropriately friendly" communications between married Stonecipher and another Boeing manager that exposed an extramarital affair. Other Boeing CEOs have been rumoured to be unfaithful to their wives, yet nothing was done to those CEOs. I think it is logical to state from my experience, and the facts, that Stonecipher would still be CEO if those emails did not exist, or had Boeing been able to track down the anonymous employee and prevent their disclosure outside of Boeing.

CFO Sears also had the unfortunate (to him) email trail behind him that sealed his doom. Boeing also needed a sacrificial lamb to try and end the Druyun affair ASAP. And despite Sears' loyalty to Boeing's "win at any cost" ethic, he was sacrificed.

I could go on and on, but I do not mean to make this a complete list of such events that prove my conclusion.

The other fact is that the "Boeing Ethics" department is not itself ethical as I found out personnally. To have a believable ethics program, it has to be highly ethical itself, as, in addition to enforcing ethical standards without bias, it has to set the ethical standard for rest of the company. When management is not investigated like everyone else when they perform unethical and illegal acts, and ethics investigations' outcomes are highly biased, ignoring the facts and the statements of multiple witnesses so as the ethics "investigation" comes to the right conclusion for Boeing to be able to continue unethical and illegal activity or to protect itself from accountability for its actions, such an ethics program should be called anything but an ethics program. In fact, it should be called the opposite. The "Unethical Boeing Management Protection Program" I think would be a fitting name for it as it operates.

Another method is used at Boeing under the guise of increased attention to ethical matters to further insulate Boeing managers from accountability for their actions. After Enron, and the related law passed that corporate executives had to take responsibility for the accuracy of financial statements and report the liabilities and the known risks to the company accurately, Boeing executives did not want to "take the fall" for the misconduct of those under them, even if they knew of that misconduct. So the annual "Code of Conduct" signing by all employees was born. If you didn't eventually sign it, you were fired. This "Code of Conduct" further insulated Boeing management from their and their department's actions, like the "Boeing Ethics" department does as noted above. If an underling was caught doing something unethical and illegal that management--even senior corporate management--knew about and let happen, such as the massive rollerstamping continuing at Boeing today despite my making Boeing Headquarters aware of it, they could just point to the fact that the underling had signed the "Code of Conduct" and say the employee had violated that code of conduct they made the underling sign, making it appear that they tried to prevent the employee from taking unethical actions by having them sign the document, when in fact the manager using the "Code of Conduct" signing for plausible deniability may have been aware of that employee's misconduct and in fact encouraged it, such is the case with some managers and executives and rollerstamping at Boeing. Many Boeing employees resent signing the "code of conduct"--not because they would do anything unethical or illegal, but simply because they do not want to take part in what they rightly see is simply an effort to cover the arses of management above them--management that has a past (and a future, do to such continuing efforts to protect their abilities to peform illegal and unethical acts) of highly unethical and illegal actions. It is simply an attempt at deflection of blame to them, they believe, when it is Boeing management that needs to be simply held accountable for their own actions. Boeing management has yet to come clean and completely disarm itself illegal actions to attain cost, schedule, and profitability goals. Chief among them is delivering rollerstamped airplanes into service as airworthy and conforming, when the massive level of rollerstamping I witnessed at Boeing makes those claims impossible to be rightly made. Simply confirming all jobs are bought (have a final inspection stamp on them) before an airplane is delivered is worthless to ensure airworthiness and conformity when such massive rollerstamping in effect makes that paper worthless as far as evidence of airworthiness and conformity is concerned.   

So, investors and concerned citizens (especially those flying Boeing airplanes and physically chancing Boeing's "acceptance of more business risk to maximize the bottom line" noted elsewhere on this site) take heed: Boeing is a company that is still highly unethical even after its self-publicized "ethics reforms", its ethics program in many cases ensures the continuance of "value adding" unethical activities at Boeing rather than what what would be expected to be the actions of such a program with the word "ethics" in its title, and continues to violate laws and regulations at will, just as it did "pre-Druyun." Being "the most arrogant company on the face of the planet" per Boeing's own Corporate Investigator, it is so unethical and arrogant that it uses its power to actually punish those trying to bring some of its corrupt management to justice, like it has done to me--the exact opposite of what would be expected of an ethical company.

In fact, Boeing is not being inconsistent by naming its Ethics department by including the word "ethics" in its title. A former Boeing CEO used to say, similarly, that Boeing built "quality airplanes." Both are technically correct uses of the terms "ethics" and "quality," however those uses are misleading as would be expected at a company still so unreformed and ethically challenged. There are good ethics and bad ethics. So, also, there is good quality and bad quality. So, if you are a Boeing executive, putting the word "ethics" in the title of your ethically challenged "ethics" department is technically correct even if massively misleading--such a moniker rightly names a department within Boeing that handles ethics complaints as noted above, overlookng bad ethical activity at Boeing if it's sufficiently in the corporate interest to do so, rather than ensuring good ethics practices at Boeing as the naive reader of the title would assume. The Boeing ethics department name states nothing about what kind of ethics that department protects--good or bad. Only its actions do. Similarly, stating Boeing builds "quality airplanes" states nothing about the quality of Boeing airplanes. Boeing could have the worst quality airplanes on the face of the planet and that description of Boeing airplanes as being "quality airplanes" would be true.  

So the saga of unethical actions at Boeing continues to this day. When Boeing management truly disarms itself of unethical acts to meet its goals and one day "grounds itself" from being the "most arrogant company on the face of the planet," I will be the first to celebrate and acknowledge that act. I fear, however, that day will never come as judged by Boeing's continuing actions. Boeing, I believe, may never have been as unethical as it is today, even in the "Sears and Druyun" days.