[42] New competitors like the Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company created increased competition for McKinsey by marketing specific branded products, such as the Growth–Share Matrix, and by selling their industry expertise.

By 2004, more than 60 percent of McKinsey's revenues were generated outside the U.S.[32] The company started a Social Sector Office (SSO) in 2008, which is divided into three practices: Global Public Health, Economic Development and Opportunity Creation (EDHOC) and Philanthropy.

During the first four months of the pandemic, McKinsey obtained in excess of $100 million in consulting work, including no-bid contracts with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Air Force.

[83][91][92] A November 1, 1993, profile story in Fortune magazine said that McKinsey & Company was "the most well-known, most secretive, most high-priced, most prestigious, most consistently successful, most envied, most trusted, most disliked management consulting firm on earth".

[34] In their 1997 book Dangerous Company: Management Consultants and the Businesses They Save and Ruin, authors James O'Shea and Charles Madigan said that McKinsey's culture had often been compared to religion, because of the influence, loyalty and zeal of its members.

[83][94] The Sunday Times wrote that McKinsey was a pioneer in the industry—the "first firm to hire MBA graduates from the top business schools to staff its projects, rather than relying on older industry personnel."

"[139] In a 2010 report, the Rainforest Foundation UK said McKinsey's cost curve methodology was misleading for policy decisions regarding the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program.

[140] Greenpeace said the curve has allowed Indonesia and Guyana to win financial incentives from the United Nations by creating inflated estimates of current deforestation so they could demonstrate reductions in comparison.

In 1931 McKinsey created a methodology for analyzing a company called the General Survey Outline (GSO), which was established based on ideas introduced in the 1924 book Business Administration.

[160] In 2019, The New York Times and ProPublica reported on newly uncovered documents which showed that McKinsey, as part of its work with ICE, proposed cuts in spending on food and medical care for migrants.

[164][165][166] McKinsey's business and policy support for authoritarian regimes came under scrutiny in December 2018, in the wake of a lavish company retreat in China held adjacent to prisons where thousands of Uyghurs were being detained without cause.

[102][167] In December 2021, NBC News reported McKinsey's connection to a manufacturing facility owned by DJI, a drone maker sanctioned by the United States Department of the Treasury for alleged complicity in aiding the persecution of Uyghurs in China.

[168] In the preceding few years, McKinsey's clients included Saudi Arabia's absolute monarchy,[101][169][170] Turkey's autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ousted former president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, and several Chinese and Russian companies under sanctions.

As part of a project for China's National Development and Reform Commission, McKinsey's think tank advised the Chinese government to "deepen co-operation between business and the military and push foreign companies out of sensitive industries," according to a 2024 Financial Times report.

[173] On October 18, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the CCP reported that "McKinsey Equipped America's Foremost Adversary and Misrepresented Work for the Chinese Military Under Oath.

[102][101] Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich, reporters for The New York Times, wrote a book entitled When McKinsey Comes to Town about the controversially unethical work history of the company.

"[99] Prior to the Enron scandal, McKinsey helped it shift from an oil and gas production company into an electric commodities trader, which led to significant growth in profits and revenues.

In books, articles, and essays, its partners regularly stamped their imprimatur on many of Enron's strategies and practices, helping to position the energy giant as a corporate innovator worthy of emulation.

[198][199] This agreement was filed in federal court in Abingdon, Virginia, with aims to resolve criminal charges which were brought up as part of the latest corporate prosecution concerning the marketing of addictive painkillers.

The consultancy's alleged failings included not soliciting the views of inmates or clinic staff; using the encrypted messaging app Wickr that deletes messages, allegedly to avoid transparency; initiatives involving the expanded use of Tasers, shotguns and K9 patrol dogs; replacing troublesome inmates with more accommodating ones in the test area, which skewed the data in favor of the project; the use of ineffective data-analytics software; and spreadsheet errors that inflated the baseline rate of violence, against which the project was measured.

[203] Later, it was found that McKinsey consultants and jail officials rigged the program by grouping compliant inmates into the housing units, and that violent crimes including "slashings and stabbings" increased over 1000% from 2011 to 2016.

[104] In 2019, McKinsey paid the Justice Department $15 million from fees earned to settle allegations relating to failure to disclose potential conflict in three bankruptcy cases that the firm had advised.

McKinsey's then Managing Partner, Dominic Barton, issued a statement following an internal investigation, in which the firm "admitted that it found violations of its professional standards but denied any acts of bribery, corruption, and payments to Trillian.

[227] South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority concluded in early 2018 that the payments to McKinsey and its local business partner, Trillian, were illegal, involving crimes such as fraud, theft, corruption and money laundering.

McKinsey had subsequently been in discussion with Eskom and the National Prosecuting Authority's Asset Forfeiture Unit to agree on a transparent, legally appropriate process for returning the R 1 billion (US$74M) it had been paid – it was confirmed on 6 July 2018 that this had been concluded.

The "...report reiterates treasury's recommendations that Singh's conduct with regards to McKinsey should be referred to the elite crime-fighting unit, the Hawks, for investigations under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act (Precca).

[235] During 2021 McKinsey & Co. agreed to repay R 870 million (US$63M) in fees to South African state logistics company Transnet SOC Ltd., seeking to distance itself from contracts linked to corruption allegations.

[255] In response to the controversy, McKinsey issued a statement on its website indicating that it "welcomes the opportunity" to provide information to parliament, and that it "does not make policy recommendations on immigration or any other topic".

[260] Trudeau asked fellow Liberal Party members Treasury Board President Mona Fortier and Procurement Minister Helena Jaczek to review the contracts return a final report.

[270] In 2023, an AFP investigation revealed in multiple leaked documents that McKinsey was using its position as primary advisor to COP28 hosts, the United Arab Emirates, to push the interest of its oil and gas clients (ExxonMobil and Aramco).