I'm assuming your SysAd doesn't know what level their machine is at, and is thus not qualified to be it's SysAd, or doesn't know how to find out, and is probably not really qualified to do anything other than change tapes that don't actually back anything up. Otherwise, ask your SysAd this question.
If you have AIX 5 you can run 'oslevel -r' and it will give you the Base OS Level and Maintenance Release Level: 5.1.x.x, say.
Prior to AIX v5 the AIX command 'oslevel' returned the Base OS Level; that is, 4.1.5, or 4.3.3. You still don't know what Maintenance Levels---if any---have been applied.
EDIT: AIX 4.3.2, and some MLs of 433, have the '-r' command. There IS a caveat: it has the same reporting behaviour that the AIX 6 mechanism has---it reports the LOWEST complete fileset level. So if you Migrate from AIX 421 to 433, you get '433' for 'oslevel' and '432-04' for 'oslevel -r'. The "work around" is to use the "Replace Same or Newer Versions?" 'yes' option when migrating (bad idea), or when updating (usually safe). I'm still not sure '-r' will give you the right answer, though, so it's always better to check your 'bos.rte' files and make sure they're at the last level for an "old" release.
What you CAN do in the absence of a useful single command is use 'lslpp -l' on 'bos.rte.*' (or a key fileset, like 'bos.rte.archive', 'bos.rte.boot', 'bos.rte.bosinst' or 'bos.rte.commands'). This will give you the fix level for these filesets, and then you can try and back-track to the filesets list for each Maintenance Level and figure out where you're at. Yep, that is as arduous as it sounds. As has been pointed out, albeit rudely, is that you will need to be root.
The other, slightly riskier, but MUCH easier option is to get a hold of the 4.3.3 Maintenance Level Packages (at least 4330 -> 43310 and 43310postml11). Try and apply the 4330-43310 ML and see what happens. If it yells at you for trying to re-do the same levels, you know where you are; if it doesn't, it'll run and you'll know where you are. Same with the 43310post fix package. Trick here, of course, is you have to be a Privileged User (really, root). So you're kinda stuck with 'oslevel -f' to force a clean report to Base Maintenance Level.
Hope this helps you some. If you can find the AIX 5 'oslevel' command that supports the '-r' option and copy it to your 433 machine, it might run. Maybe.