Conflicts of interest are not uncommon in today’s workplace. The key is to be aware when a potential conflict of interest appears, and to know how to stop it before it gets out of hand.
There’s huge value to a company that can avoid conflicts of interest: competing professional or personal interests, or inappropriate business dealings can subject a company to fines or litigation, and even the appearance of a conflict of interest can create distrust or reputational harm.
We’ve collaborated with our business ethics experts—Chris MacDonald and Sally March—to create a handy 6 step checklist to help employees identify and avoid possible business conflicts of interest.
Our checklist helps the learner to avoid problems by asking themselves a series of questions that help them explore their own assumptions and behaviors:
- Spotting the Conflict
- Could my personal interests influence my work judgment?
- How would this appear to co-workers and outsiders looking in?
- Am I ignoring things because I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble?
The checklist also helps employees understand that it’s better to bring the potential (or actual) conflict to the company’s attention so it can be resolved:
- Stopping the Conflict
- Let someone who can help know about the potential conflict.
- Don’t assume you can handle a potential conflict of interest on your own.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Download this Conflict of Interest checklist and you will:
- Have a new resource to educate employees in a handy format for their future reference
- Implement a more thoughtful and behaviorally sound approach to spotting and reporting potential conflicts of interest
- Create a greater likelihood that your organization will avoid potential conflicts of interest, and resolve actual conflicts of interest in a prompt and appropriate way
- Support a corporate culture of integrity and transparency
Emtrain also offers a Conflicts of Interest training course, featuring real-world scenarios in modern video scenes that teach learners how to identify and avoid conflicts of interest, and models how they can remedy them if they arise.
