> Can you genuinely say that there are no facts in this case that create even the appearance of bias?

I can say with some confidence that nobody involved in the agreement, on either side, would be surprised by this article's findings. And I am assuming that there is sufficient nuance around the concept of "appearance of conflict of interest" is covered by the mutual understanding of the firm's internal controls. I'll bet that the FDA has no interest in suing McKinsey over this.

I don't think your casual reading of this snippet is enough to understand how this works. You're welcome to disagree.

I am involved in the agreement, because the FDA is part of my government. I don't want my government ignoring conflicts of interest with a wink because "everybody knows". I don't want my government ignoring contracts because of an unwritten "mutual understanding". Based on my understanding of human nature and your own posts in this thread about how easy it is to move between projects at McKinsey, I don't believe "firewalls" are effective and I don't want an unethical organization with an extremely recent national corruption scandal and blatant conflicts of interest working for my government's regulators.

You're missing the point. It's not "wink wink everybody knows". It's "we explicitly understand you're working with pharma companies whose interests may differ from ours but that these teams will be isolated and thus under no conflict of interest". It's not under the table.

I'm not sure what you mean by how easy it is to move between projects. It's not. You don't just get to say "hey I wanna work for tesla, anybody doing a project on tesla?". That information is secret. But you do have the ability to say "I would like to work in energy, and I don't want to serve anyone working on oil".

I'm not entirely interested in changing your mind. Just showing some context.

edit: cannot respond to the below, but the FDA does not disclose all the details of its operations. I too would like if government entities were fully transparent. But that's another issue. You'll have a hard time getting ALL the details of every decision made with FOIA acts. And finally, there are consequences to breaking these contracts. That should be obvious.

Explicitly understood, but not documented, not disclosed to the public, and no measures taken to ensure that McKinsey is staying honest and no personnel or information was shared between teams during the 12+ year engagement. No concern that what they got caught for in South Africa might not have been a one-time deal. Just took their word for it and kept their secrets.

In writing being the operative term. In writing, not just in "discussions".

In writing would only be the operative term if the discussions concluded things were a conflict of interest. They're not required to provide non-issues in writing.

"the Contractor agrees it shall make an immediate and full disclosure [...] of any facts that may cause a reasonably prudent person to question the contractor’s impartiality because of the appearance or existence of bias."

You can run in this circle as long as you want. If the FDA execs and the McKinsey execs reach a mutual understanding of the circumstances, including the fact that McKinsey is going to be simultaneously serving unnamed third parties with contrary interests, and that this is ok, then the reasonably prudent person will conclude that these are not factors to cause them to question the contractor's impartiality. It would not be surprising to me at all if additional language in the contract explicitly address this point.