There are two codes of conduct at every company that can afford to print one. The first is hung in the lobby, narrated in the annual compliance training, and signed by everyone who wants to keep a job. The second is not written down. It is carried by the men who run the place, and it holds a single sentence: this is for them, not for you. Christopher Kubasik has now been fired from two of the country’s largest defense companies, fourteen years apart, for breaking the signed edition — and the second company handed him its top job with the first dismissal sitting in its drawer. That tells you which edition runs the building.
Lockheed Martin ejected him in 2012, just before he was to become its chief executive, over a “lengthy, close personal relationship” with a subordinate. He did not see a courtroom. He did not lose his clearance. He barely went home. A few years later, L3Harris Technologies — a $52 billion defense contractor that overhauls the plane now flying as Air Force One and, under Kubasik’s tenure, won a $1 billion federal investment in one of its rocket-motor units — made him its chief executive. The first dismissal sat in the drawer the entire time. On Monday, L3Harris fired him again, citing the company’s own code and an internal inquiry. The statement then did its real work: the alleged behavior, the company said, would not affect financial performance, business relationships, or operations. Three futures protected. Nothing about the conduct. Nothing for the people the code is supposed to protect. No details at all. Because at that level the code is not a promise. It is a personnel form with a nondisclosure clause.
The WSJ CEO Brief, by Lila MacLellan, treats the moment as a teachable prompt about corporate silence. The better prompt is why the leadership class, which knows perfectly well that silence buys the next employer a clean slate, keeps buying it. The answer that the new leader is paid to look forward, not back, is the answer the previous leader paid for. The lesson is paid for twice. It is learned never.
A federal fraud chief was out this week gesturing at a “record enforcement” number by reaching back to an old case. Down the hall, the man with two conduct violations on his record, across two of the country’s largest defense companies, stays comfortable. He is an asset of the first edition. The CEO in the headline and the enforcement record in the press release run on separate clocks, and the second edition runs both.
The roster runs thick enough to be called a system. Les Moonves held the chairmanship of CBS through allegations that would have ended any other executive’s tenure, fought the $120 million severance his contract guaranteed him, and walked with nothing after arbitration that ran past the public’s attention span. Steve Easterbrook at McDonald’s was dismissed in 2019 for a relationship with a subordinate, walked with the severance his contract guaranteed, then watched his old company sue him for it back when three additional relationships with subordinates surfaced. The convention is the convention. A senior officer is dismissed “with respect for his many contributions,” the contract is paid, the next employer does not ask, and the second employer quietly repeats the dance.
A scholar who has studied corporate scandals names the thing with precision: ambiguous rules. Two types in every organization, he says — the official ones and the informal ones. A junior employee breaks the rules and the write-up lands; a senior one breaks them and delivers numbers, he is tolerated. The tolerated part is the part everyone sees. The write-up is the part everyone sees too. The board then meets the major fact and issues a press release. When a man at the top can break the printed rule and be promoted to the top of a still larger company, the message to the rest of the building is not “we take conduct seriously.” The message is: we take numbers seriously, and conduct is for the people who cannot close their own government deal.
I have known cleaners and security guards and fabricators who signed the same code. They will draw, quite rationally, the conclusion that the second set of rules is the true one — and then the slow corruption the scholar warns of is set for its next decade. If you want to see how a corporate culture dies, do not watch the moment of the last violation. Watch the moment the company declares that conduct at the top does not change the financials, and has no interest in causes. It happened. It is happening.
A code of conduct that fires its keeper twice, pays him his contractual severance, and protects him from naming is not a code. It is a coupon. And the next chief executive will be hired to look forward, not back, because back is where the second edition lives, and the second edition runs the building.