Kismayo university

Faculty of computer stud

Course: computer ethics

6: conflict of interest in comput

Presented by: Ahmed Mohamed Elmi

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 Definition of conflict of
interest
A conflict of interest is a situation in which a decision maker
has the knowledge or power to make or influence a decision
in such a way that the outcome of that action furthers that
person’s private interests. McDonald (undated) defines it as
“a situation in which a person, such as a public official, an
employee, or a professional, has a private or personal interest
sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his
or her official duties.’’
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 Definition of conflict of interest
cont………..
Typically, this means that pursuing one interest, the private interest, results in a
course of action that is contrary to one the company or client would have
taken to achieve its own best interest, the public or corporate interest. Private
interests need not be limited to that individual’s personal gain. It can also
include the interests of that person’s spouse, child, relative or other, non-
arm’s-length person.

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 Definition of conflict of interest
cont………..
In this situation, there are three aspects of which to be cognizant. The first is the
person’s private interest in the outcome of an action or decision. Generally
this is a financial interest that benefits the person, a relative of the person or a
friend of the person. A conflict of interest need not be caused by the seeking
of financial gain, but may seek to further other interests such as special favors,
tickets to ball games or admission to groups normally inaccessible to the
person.

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 Definition of conflict of interest
cont………..
US capitalism is built on the effort of individuals to improve their position
through the making of money, advancement in professional position and
acquisition of skills that others do not have. Conflicts mainly arise when the
person is involved in deciding for or influencing someone else, regarding
what is best for them, but the advisor/decision maker does not fully disclose
their personal interest.

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 Definition of conflict of interest
cont………..
In IT, professionals take on responsibilities involving technical knowledge that
many other persons may not possess. Professional codes of ethics such as
those promulgated by the Association for Computing Machinery and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers offer guidelines suggesting
that IT professionals should not utilize their specialized knowledge to take
advantage of persons who lack this knowledge.

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 Definition of conflict of interest
cont………..
A professional should be guided by principles higher than simply furthering
their private or personal interests. The clients of IT services, users ± managers,
customers ± expect that these professionals will not allow their personal
interests to interfere with their objective, professional judgment. The
professional may not always see that there is a conflict of interest affecting
them. . Others, however, may see a conflict, no matter how objectively the
professional believes they are acting. It is essential that the professional avoid
apparent and as well as actual conflicts of interests.

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 How conflicts of interest occur
(types of conflict of interest)
Ethicists Kernaghan and Langford (1990) identify seven types of conflicts of
interest. While there is some overlap in these categories, this typology is used
here to describe the kinds of conflicts that affect IT professionals.

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 1. Self-dealing identifies
Self-dealing identifies a situation in which you capitalize on your position
for personal gain. One might, for example, in addition to working for a
company as a networking administrator, have part ownership in a
company that does networking installations.
You could be in a position to evaluate proposals for corporate installations
and use this position to secure a contract for the company in which you
have ownership. In a state agency that was developing an advanced
application using expert systems, a consultant who was brought in to
offer advice on an unrelated project was shown the advanced
application.
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 1. Self-dealing identifies conti……
The consultant promptly denigrated the project as having been inadequately thought
through because it used an inappropriate programming tool. The agency head who
was not especially computer-adept, cancelled the project despite signs that the
project was likely to be successful. Unknown to most of the people involved were
the consultant’s significant investments in the company that sold the programming
tool being recommended. Still another example of self-dealing is a programming
manager finding an internship position for his son or niece without letting others
either compete for the internship or allowing other employees to assist in
reviewing the credentials of other candidates. The manager has a clear conflict in
being able to look at his own relative’s resume objectively and fairly.

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 1. Self-dealing identifies conti……
One more case of self-dealing is that of an IT person buying microcomputers
from one company rather than another, not because of quality or price, but
because the employee holds stock in the first company. In another case, a
local systems integrator was hired as an evaluator of proposals for the first
stage of networking in a building for a physicians’ group practice. Although
the contractor was ineligible for doing the work, the contractor assisted
another local firm with which he worked frequently, to prepare their proposal.

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 1. Self-dealing identifies conti……
His advice put the competing firms at a distinct and unfair disadvantage. A
classic example of self-dealing is a reseller who is ``neutral’’ in
recommendations to a customer or perhaps even negative in evaluating
various options. The reseller knows, however, that a larger commission
attaches to one product they are selling versus that of another, but does not
mention this to the client. This problem is not always restricted to
salespeople.

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 1. Self-dealing identifies conti……
It is not unknown for IT personnel to recommend or rig a bidding process to
favor one vendor over another, either because they like a salesperson better or
because they are more familiar with one vendor than they are with another.
In discussing this with one IT director, I was told that one of the more
common conflicts of interest he saw originated with non-IT managers who
pushed for sales and contracts with companies owned by the non-IT
managers’ relatives.

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 2. Accepting benefits

When employees accept cash gifts or bribes, as enticements for acting in a

particular way, they are being unethical and, in many situations, acting
illegally. A CIO who accepts a ``training session’’ at the Florida site of a
software company where the emphasis on golf exceeds that of the software
usage is a rather obvious example of this form of conflict. The benefits
provided might come by way of gifts whose monetary value is less obvious,
but real nonetheless.

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 2. Accepting benefits conti………

A tricky example of this is the loan of a laptop to a PC manager by a computer

software vendor. On the one hand, the manager has access to a computer
with the software available which he can test and with which he can gain
experience so as to determine whether the software is beneficial to the
company. On the other hand, the portability of the computer raises the
question as to whether the hardware availability benefit to the individual
outweighs the benefits the company will realize. It is equally unethical for the
vendor to offer such a computer for usage, if it is doing so in order to create
indebtedness on the part of the manager.

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 3. Influence peddling

Here, the professional solicits benefits in exchange for using her influence to
unfairly advance the interests of a particular party. One chief information
officer had her own consulting firm. It became obvious that many equipment
and software acquisitions by the CIO for the company resulted from the
vendors’ ability to direct consulting contracts from other firms to the CIO.
There may not have been a quid pro quo stated but the CIO was clearly
accepting benefits that influenced her decisions on what was best for the
company that employed her.

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 3. Influence peddling conti…..

Bowyer (2000) describes an incident in which a faculty member at a university

also ran an independent company that qualified for contracts with the Federal
government. Beyond the conflict of interest the professor had created by
taking contracts that might have been given to his university, he also had a
doctoral student who was directly involved in the awarding of some contracts.
The professor provided the student with technical reports coming from the
contract work that the students could use as the basis for dissertation
purposes. This is clearly a conflict of interest for both the students and the
professor.

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 4. Using your employer’s property for private advantage
Perhaps, the most common form of conflict of interest is the use of corporate
computing resources for personal gain. IT employees have been found to be
running private businesses with company computers. Since the company’s
computers may support expensive, specialized software, say a statistical
package, satellite mapping, or a simulation package, the employee may use
this software for his or her own consulting assignment. It may be permissible
for the employee to do this kind of consulting, but using the company’s
computers may not be allowed.

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 4. Using your employer’s property for private advantage
conti……
Some IT staff, under the guise of technological assessment have acquired
specialized software or have obtained training in cutting edge technologies for
the purpose of improving their skills and background so they can qualify for a
new position at another company. One other example of the misuse of an
employer’s property is the early designation of equipment as obsolete so the
person declaring a printer or a microcomputer obsolete or unusable can
``throw it out’’ in such a way that they use it for their private purposes.

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 5. Using confidential information
IT professionals may have access to a wide variety of data files and reports. They
may access files that are on a central mainframe, within the e-mail system, or
on a hard disk. Some of these documents may imply the profitability of the
firm or problems that it is likely to encounter. Similarly, an IT technician may
even see materials on an executive’s desk while doing system upgrades.

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 5. Using confidential information conti….
Consequently, it may be that the IT professional obtains information that could
be used to buy or sell stock, insider trading, or to try to buy land in an area
into which the company is expanding or to get an inside track on new
positions being announced.

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 6. Outside employment or moonlighting
IT employees have skills that are in great demand. The very skills that made
them attractive to their immediate employer are the same skills that may
make them of interest to other firms. Thus, an employee in maintaining the
Web site for a company may be active in building Web sites off-hours for
other companies.

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 6. Outside employment or moonlighting conti…
They might cut back on their time and effort with their primary employer by
leaving early, saving design ideas for personal clients, giving away proprietary
information, or taking telephone calls regarding their own business during
working hours with the primary employer. A more obvious example would be
a computer graphics designer setting up an after-hours trade that competes
directly with her full-time employer.

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 6. Post-employment
It is still fairly unusual that IT employees sign non-competitive agreements with
their employers. They may quit to start a competing business or they may
hire one with a competing firm that requires precisely the same skills for
which their previous employer trained them.

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 6. Post-employment conti……
For instance, when Wal-Mart wanted to build a Web site with complex database
operations, they hired 11 high level IT employees away from [Link]. It
is also common for public employees to leave a governmental operation and
then to set up or become part of a consulting group that lobbies the
employee’s former department. The insider knowledge these employees
receive and their personal relationships with employees of the agency enable
them to compete for contracts more effectively than can other consultants.
Indeed, it may be that the employee’s leaving may precipitate the need for
consultants to be retained to finish a project that the employee should have
finished.

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 6. Post-employment conti……
Another example of a post-employment conflict of interest is seen in the
programmer who withholds ideas for software development from her
employer, even though they relate directly to the software on which she is
working. Her intention is to start a company of her own at a later date, which
will use the ideas more effectively and put her current employer at a
disadvantage. Yet another example commonly seen is the taking of trade
secrets or other useful information from one employer to another when an
employee changes positions.

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 6. Post-employment conti……
This may well be illegal if it is discovered. Some small consultants indicate that
when they are interested in participating in large government requests for
proposals they try to establish partnerships with larger consulting firms they
believe will be competing for the contracts. A subgroup of the smaller
consulting firms sets up agreements with several contracts in the expectation
that one of them will win and they will benefit regardless of the outcome.
This is a conflict because the smaller consultant may share information about
competing proposals among the competing firms.

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 6. Post-employment conti……
This form of conflict is paralleled by the frequent registration of IT professionals
with multiple placement agencies, including Web sites like [Link].
Their intention is to find a way to get a new job without having to pay a fee.
In this effort, the employer who is even more likely to have to pay an agency
fee may abet them.

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