Comment by sethammons

optics. If the CEO is reporting bugs they find or those bug numbers appear "concerning," the apparent lack of quality calls for corrective action.

Obviously things were not the healthiest there. The CEO should be similarly interested in other projects and their quality. Your manager should be aware of the relative quality and your award and tell his manager that "it has been / will be dealt with" and then to either never file the pip or speed run you through it (while letting you in on why: optics). And then the manager should be working towards producing better reporting metrics that executives can use that expose quality issues at large