In today’s Jerusalem Post, there’s an article about moves by the Israeli Justice Ministry to clarify what constitutes a conflict of interest, in light of the recent scandal involving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The problem seems to be that existing laws are not clear about what constitutes a COI. This lead State Attorney Moshe Lador to halt legal proceedings against Olmert because of insufficient evidence.
Lador wrote, “Even though the fact that three people had personal connections with Olmert and this increases, to some extent, the force of the conflict of interest in which the prime minister was involved, it does not seem that it is enough to create the ‘aggravating aspect’ that turns a conflict of interest into a criminal act.
“In other words, even though we are confronted with an aggregate of conflicts of interest – each of which does not create criminal responsibility by itself – the aggregate weight is also insufficient to establish the critical mass of conflict of interest to the degree of gravity that is sufficient, by itself, to constitute injury to the public that reaches the level of a criminal act.”
But this legal interpretation masks the broader, substantive negative impact of COI on public confidence, especially when it involves a sitting Prime Minister! As noted by Hebrew University criminal law professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, who is quoted further on in the Post article, State Attorney Lador missed the point:
Kremnitzer quoted Lador as saying that Olmert’s action did not harm the values of ethical conduct, public confidence in government or proper government behavior in a “substantial” way.
“What does “substantial” mean”? Kremnitzer asked. “Lador writes that Olmert caused harm to public confidence in the government and that he deviated from the straight and narrow path. In my opinion, that is very substantial.”
See this interesting commentary by my good friend and fellow blogger, Chris MacDonald:
College Football, Academics, and Conflict of Interest
Chris runs a very smart business ethics blog (I’ve also linked to it on my sidebar) which has been one of my regular reads since he started, more than 3 years ago!
Over at the bioethics.blog.net, Summer Johnson has an post about the Cleveland Clinic and there recent attempt to deal with some challenging issues (very prominent in the media over the couple of few years), with COI in financing of clinical trials.
Jumping on the Conflict of Interest Bandwagon
There are numerous definitions of conflict of interest in the philosophical, business, and legal literatures. But for my purposes, I will use the following general and specific definitions of COI:
General
A COI can be defined as “a situation in which a person has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her official duties as, say, a public official, an employee, or a professional” (MacDonald et al. 2002, p. 68).
Specific
In the case of university research, a COI can arise with “any factor that might tend to undermine a competent researcher’s ability to make scientifically reliable judgments concerning research strategy, evidence or conclusions” (Davis 1999, p. 52).
These factors are understood to include not only financial interests, but also the full range of personal or psychological factors that may affect one’s judgment (e.g., personal pride, prestige, competitiveness). Such conflicts may be characterized as real or potential (i.e., an actual conflict of interest or a situation that threatens to evolve into a conflict of interest), and/or apparent (i.e., perceived to be a conflict, whether real or potential). Even merely apparent COI can do significant damage to individual and institutional reputations, because even apparent COI may be corrosive of trust.