Pioneering a Code of Ethics—and Then Perfecting It

It was the height of the Great Depression. Unemployment in the U.S. had hit 23%, and public trust in industry leadership was thin. With a background in management and a flair for marketing from his time at Weyerhaeuser, Carl Hamilton came to Booz Allen with an idea.

As a trusted advisor to some of the most important companies in the U.S., we needed to show the world that we were meeting the highest standards of ethical behavior and accountability—to clients, each other, and the greater good. Only then could we help clients create value and restore public trust in the economy.

We needed to follow our founder Ed Booz’s own advice that he gave to clients: Put the right people in the right place to do things in an organized fashion. In the early years of management science, this was intuitive but revolutionary thinking. How would we decide what was right? Carl’s solution was to pen Booz Allen’s code of ethics, 10 sharply written rules, and a first of its kind in corporate history—chief among them “a willingness on the part of all members to face all firm problems objectively and dispassionately.” Or, as we would now say in terms of our values, collective ingenuity.

Through the years and across our clients, our leaders signed the code of ethics to guide their actions and pledge themselves to a standard of operational excellence and integrity. Their promises to serve the company and our clients objectively and with the highest degree of professionalism were crucial to Booz Allen being trusted with some of the most critical missions in and for the United States, including being asked to help the Navy double its size in 1941 in preparation for World War II. Embedding a management consultancy within the established bureaucracy turned out to be an accelerant.

Fast forward to the dawn of the new millennium. Under the leadership of then–Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Shrader, our code of ethics for officers transformed into a more formal statement of values for all of us. But achieving consensus among the leaders of a company as diverse and dynamic as Booz Allen was no small feat.

By asking who we are, where we’ve been, and what we want to be in the future, the leadership team eventually arrived at a set of values that resonated with the essence of the company. Client service, diversity, excellence, entrepreneurship, teamwork, professionalism, fairness, integrity, respect, and trust—these tenets captured Booz Allen’s fundamental character and were unveiled at a global partner meeting in 1999, current President and Chief Executive Officer Horacio Rozanski recalled.

"This wasn’t just: ‘We’re going to write some core values and put them on the wall and put them on the website,’” Horacio said in 2013. “This was: ‘We’re going to live this way.’”

Horacio described the thread leading from our code of ethics in the 1930s to the values Ralph documented as part of Vision 2000 to how we define ourselves today—unflinching courage, passionate service, ferocious integrity, collective ingenuity, and champion’s heart. “Booz Allen is always changing, but the most immutable part is our values,” Horacio said.

Enshrined in the 1930s, our ethics show up in our culture, in our client interactions, and out in the world. In 2024, Ethisphere named Booz Allen as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies^® for the fifth year in a row. While that recognition is great validation, it is not a destination. As we turn 110, we look to take our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity to new horizons and ever-greater heights.