Managing Conflicts Of Interest: Ways To Mitigate Unethical Behavior

Questions:

1. What conflicts of interest have you personally experienced in personal or professional roles?

2. If you perceive a potential conflict for yourself, what are some ways you might ensure that this conflict doesn’t lead to unethical behavior for you and others?

3. When have others’ conflicts of interest impacted how you or those you know were treated?

4. What types of policies can or do organizations implement to try to reduce conflicts of interest or their costs? 

• Personally, the instance where I have experienced some form of conflict of interest is when am assigned a particular task in class, and I am the acting head of the group. I may tend to select some group members who are brighter and more proficient in class and leave out any individual who may seem to be lagging my group behind. All this is as a result of the aspect of conflict of interest which is brought about by me trying to get higher grades when it comes to class activities.
• Tackling the issue of interest of conflict the ways that I can manage it is by implementing a robust conflict interest policy that can be effective and efficient in lowering the levels of conflict of interest in my case. Hence, the implementation of such a strategy tends to reflect the individual risk profile. Maintenance of integrity may also serve as a vital step that should be undertaken since it avoids conflict (Gordon, 2014).
• In my situation, an instance where a conflict of interest has impacted me and some of my colleagues is when some lecturers and tutors commit the duties of other tertiary education members. This means that the levels of tutors efficiency may not be sufficient compared to the tertiary teacher.
• A manner in which organizations may take to solve the issue of conflict of interest is by first creating some special attention to any issue that may lead to the rise of conflict interest. Later, the organization should look at the escalations that may arise so as to be able to come up with effective and independent strategies. There can also be the establishment of ethical policies or codes that monitor that there is no instance that leads to a conflict of interest (Harcup, 2016). 

• There is, this time, I attended an event with some of my friends who were not brought up morally upright compared to me. Due to the pressure of discovering new things they thought of doing some unlawful acts. Since I was in the group, I did some of these acts because others did it. In my case, it wasn’t okay, and I regret it since there is some form of guilt I still bare in my thoughts.
• According to me, the statement cheating is contagious is true. Reason being people believe that ones they cheat the level of primary motivation tends to dread, thus it is more powerful than the reward aspect. To support this cheating is often contagious because people perceive some real or imaginative benefits; hence, this motivates people to cheat even more. According to Creswell (2013), argues that people cheat for the purpose of attaining self-deception and rationalizing their behaviors.
• The only way that one can maintain or balance loyalty in a group against one’s ethical behavior is by either avoiding the group or consider keeping a low profile in the groups participation. Hence, your notification in the group would be hardly recognized. In my case, I haven’t experienced any instance.
• Groupthink occurs when a particular group makes faulty thought since the group pressure leads to a deterioration of the moral judgments, reality testing, and mental efficiency (Kitcher, 2011). Therefore, groupthink tends to ignore the alternatives that lead to irrational actions thus dehumanizing other groups. In my case, the only instance where I have been subjected to groupthink is when we decided to commit some racism acts to some of the people in my neighborhood. Therefore, the stereotypes of view groups made a negative thought about them, but my conscience contradicted their thoughts. 

• The concept of ethical fading tends to occur when we are unable to see our faults. Sometimes unethical fading in a business takes place when people overcharge, hide unwelcome facts, and become corrupt. Therefore, it tends to put people at risk through cutting corners leading to instances where an organizations opts to pay police some tip offs. Ethical fading also can also be observed in the terms of moral colors of any ethical decision; hence the fade tends to bleach hues into voids that have moral implications. Therefore, unethical behavior comes as a result of the psychological tendencies that create the unethical behavior (Blyth & Landua, 2014). Thus, when trying to create efforts to solve the ethical decision making process there is the need of understanding these psychological tendencies so that they can come up with efficient and effective ethical policy measures. According to human thought people fail or betray themselves in regards to their ethical standards. Hence, people bare the ethical blind spots which obscure them from making any important ethical decision (Blyth & Landua, 2014). In my life scenario, there was, this time, I abused my colleague and him, had not committed any wrongful act, but I was the one who had committed the wrongful act before striking.
• There was, this time, I defended my fellow friend in class on an acquisition that was true. As a result, it was identified that we were lying. Till today, I regret because we were suspended from school and this affected my grades.
• Recently, I came across a case in the newspaper that a person was wrongly convicted for close to ten years after it was determined that he was being framed. As a result, this man’s integrity in the society was degraded because of acts that he did not commit. 

• In my work life, I tend to believe that if I am the manager, my focus will be on the view of making profits and reduce the expense as much as possible. Hence, it means that I could be making my employees working environment hostile since I offer poor funds to some of their basic employment expense.
• In school, there was, this time, I decided that I won’t do my assignments, then on the due date, I emailed my tutor framing that I had some challenges in performing the assignment. Instead of doing the ethical thing of completing the assignment on time I chose to frame some fake excuses.
• Politician’s channels people decisions but telling them that they will implement policies that favor them, but fail to do so. On the other hand, advertisers frame us through offering quotes which sound convincing compared to what is true.
• Framing my affect my ethical decision making in my projected workplace because in any business they tend to be profit oriented. So I would tend to frame the product or services we undertake so as to attract more clients which mean more profit.
• In making the decisions about my career and life, I will consider asking and gathering more information so as to make proper decisions. I will also ensure that I challenge my ideas so as to come up with concrete ethical decisions. 

• If I met a famous white collar criminal, I would expect him or her to be kind in a certain manner. Reason being these people tend to be kind and faithful to you so that you can gain the best impressions of themselves. Hence, it becomes hard to substantiate their character because of their act of being humble.
• Why it is common to hear white collar criminals be disguised by their neighbor as nice, and a real family man comes from their sophistication. The white collar criminals commit non-violent crimes. Therefore, they are disguised like this because their acts normally affect their field of expertise and don’t hurt people physically. Therefore, to cover their acts they must act in these unique manners.
• Some of the petty things that I have done such as fighting back once a friend makes me angry and the use of abuse terms against my colleagues don’t represent my true character.
• Judging people characters and behavior tends to be a challenge. Therefore, the unique manner that we could use in judging people character more accurately is by observing their personality, and this can be handled in three forms that are observing his characters, behaviors and creating a form of observer accuracy (Dewey & Zheng, 2013). Hence, these factors will be of great support for your judgment. 

The best example in such a case is where there is a huge forest that is ancient and since history some people feel that a forest is a form of their community heritage. In this case, a private developer feels that they should build some home settlements for people due to high population and built a hydro-electric power station since there is a waterfall in the forest. In such a case, one might be tempted to take the investors option because of electricity provision, employment and enough land for the high population. But, the government feels that the investors shouldn’t develop in this land for the purpose of respecting the heritage set out in the ancient times by these community ancestors. All these decisions tend to be morally permitted, but they are different leading to the formation of the fundamental moral unit in such a case.

• Honestly being paid based on my performance negatively influenced the manners that I approached my job. For instance, I could develop more focus on instances where people were being paid more leaving the rest behind or doing it inefficiently. Therefore, this degraded my performance in a particular manner and could sometimes jeopardize my fellow colleagues since they also could suffer the same predicaments from my shortcomings.
• The issue of students perverting their grades mainly comes as a result of inadequate preparation. Therefore, students may pervert this intent by cheating during an exam, copying a fellow student’s assignment and failing to cite the sources of their data. Thus, such acts tend to propel the issue of poor grades incentives.
• Gaming is an unethical system that should be greatly discouraged (Sherin, 2013). Hence, it is the responsibility of both the person who designs the incentive systems and the exploiter to take the appropriate step. For instance, the designer of the incentive should be strict in monitoring and encourage the participants not to consider gaming on the system. On the other hand, the exploiter should honest so as to maintain integrity in the system.
• Gaming tends to be an act of being corrupt in a particular manner so that you can have an incentive that isn’t original (Harcup, 2016). On the other hand, cheating tends to be the attainment of something desirable through acts of dishonesty or unfair means. Therefore, drawing the line in these two cases is that both are the same since it involves the commitment of unethical act. 

• The statement by Psychologist Dan Ariley on avoiding the first dishonest act is an important factor to consider. The reason for him stating this is as a result of once you commit the first act it doesn’t hurt, and you get the feeling of doing it again. Hence, that feeling of committing the act again comes from the first step of being dishonest, thus before realization you come to find out that the habit has become a norm. Therefore, I do agree with his thought of avoiding this first act of being dishonest.
• In my case, the slippery slope phenomenon has occurred in my academics where I used to prepare for my exams at the beginning of the semester. But, there is this one time I was so held up and felt that I can’t prepare for the exams that early. Hence, the act of being dishonest to me made be escalate my behavior of early preparation, but to be ethical, I decided to change which didn’t happen in a single day but took a lot of time.
• In the newspaper, I have come across the most notorious drug dealer in the American History who was known as Pablo. He began as a minor drug peddler in the streets of Mexico before being the huge drug seller globally. Because of these small unethical conduct landed him into big trouble with the authorities.
• I agree with Cynthia Cooper on the slippery slope that it is lost one step at a time. This is because once you commit an unethical act for the first time and fail to be caught it doesn’t hurt. Hence, you will tend to commit such an act again and again whenever you feel like.
• To prevent an event from snowballing into the slippery slope it is vital if you listen to your instincts, collect adequate information so as to avoid the slippery, look for backup plan so as to avoid committing unethical acts, and once you have committed such an act it is also necessary to consider pulling back before it’s late.  

References

Sherin, A. (2013), Sustainable thinking: ethical approaches to design and design management. Lausanne, AVA.

Gordon, R. (2014), Mainstreaming torture: ethical approaches in the post-9/11 United States.

National Exposure Research Laboratory (U.S.). (2008), Scientific and ethical approaches for observational exposure studies. 

Blyth, E., & Landau, R. (2014), Third party assisted conception across cultures: social, legal, and ethical perspectives.

Creswell, J. W. (2013), Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches.