<p>This article critically examines the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) claims to independence, impartiality, and integrity, particularly in its work on national competitiveness. At the macrolevel, we assess this private membership organisation’s alignment with its stated mission to improve the state of the world, concluding that it has prioritised neoliberal economic interests over its professed stakeholder capitalism. At the methodological level, we expose systemic flaws in the WEF’s competitiveness assessments as published in its Global Competitiveness Reports (GCR), spurious science including the conflation of inputs and outcomes, exclusion of key social and environmental indicators, and reliance on opaque, ideologically biased economic measures. These and other methodological weaknesses undermine the validity and integrity of the WEF’s rankings, which nonetheless wield considerable influence over public policy and corporate strategy. The WEF’s 2020 suspension of its competitiveness index – absent meaningful accountability or reform – further highlights the ethical shortcomings of this powerful institution. Genuine progress requires a fundamental reset of metrics, governance, and accountability mechanisms to reflect holistic, outcome-based indicators of competitiveness focused on a better world. Without such reform, the WEF’s claims to moral leadership remain unsubstantiated and hollow, and the responsibility for ethical oversight needs to shift to civil society, academia, and policymakers.</p>