Business and Professional Ethics Journal

published on March 25, 2021

Systemic versus Severable Conflicts of Interest

This paper is split into two parts. The first half analyzes conflicts of interests’ effects on judgment, the harms these effects threaten, and our current policies and practices for handling conflicts of interest. This analysis relies on scholarship in several fields, most prominently psychology, all of which have reasons to worry about conflicts of interest. This analysis will show that our current classifications of conflicts of interest and our current strategies for handling conflicts of interest are confusing, of dubious benefit, or both. The second half provides some tools for helping us to limit or avoid the harms of conflicts of interest. These simple tools focus on how we think about and classify conflicts of interest. Specifically, I recommend beginning to classify conflicts of interest in a new way: as either severable or systemic. These new classifications are not intended to be heavy conceptual machinery, but simple and valuable tools. These new classifications, even though they are not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive, help delineate tractable strategies and help determine the distribution of responsibilities for addressing specific conflicts of interest.