Training designed around fraud reduction without bias testing.
Executive bonuses partly tied to decreases in premium-cabin compensation payouts.
Maya stared at that metric.
There it was.
Incentive.
Always follow incentives.
If employees were rewarded for reducing compensation claims, if managers were rewarded for showing fewer discrimination complaints, if customer verification protocols rewarded confrontation but imposed little cost for false suspicion, the system taught people which mistakes were affordable.
And which customers would carry the cost.
The meeting lasted ninety-eight minutes.
At the end, Anderson called for executive session without Malcolm.
The CEO left.
Maya looked at the faces on her screen.
The aircraft crossed over the Midwest.
Amara woke and began playing with Maya’s necklace.
Anderson said:
“We need a recommendation.”
The audit chair:
“Terminate for cause.”
CFO:
“Terminate.”
Another director:
“Immediate suspension pending outside review.”
General counsel:
“Either is defensible. Documentation supports material misrepresentation to the board.”
Anderson looked toward Maya.
She was quiet.
“Maya?”
She stroked Amara’s hand.
“I want everyone to separate three questions.”
They waited.
“First: Did management conceal material information from the board?”
“Yes.”
“Second: Did management approve practices that created foreseeable customer harm?”
“Evidence suggests yes.”
“Third: Should the CEO be removed?”
She paused.
“That decision should rest on the first two.”
“Not on what happened to me today.”
The audit chair nodded.
Maya continued.
“If we fire him because a video involving a board member is going viral, then we are committing the same institutional failure we are accusing management of.”
Anderson frowned.
“How?”
“We would be responding to status.”
“Not evidence.”
Silence.
Maya said:
“A woman without my title deserved the same response.”
“If we suddenly become ethical because one of us was in Seat 12A, we have learned nothing.”