We have transitive dependencies on org.scala-lang:scala-library and org.scala-lang:scala-reflect that do not have matching versions. In 2.3.x we currently depend on 2.12.11 of the former and 2.12.10 of the latter. Via its Scala module, upgrading to Jackson 2.11.3, moves the former to 2.12.12 which appears to be incompatible with Kafka's API (org.apache.kafka:kafka_2.12:2.5.1):
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: scala/math/Ordering$$anon$7
at kafka.api.ApiVersion$.orderingByVersion(ApiVersion.scala:45)
It looks like we need to start managing Scala's library and reflect modules in spring-boot-parent.