Abstract
At the core of ethics in professions is the ability to cope with conflict of interest situations. The professional has a primary duty to look after the interest of the client, and a secondary duty to serve his or her personal interests. The client is normally not in a position to evaluate the quality of the service on offer. Due to the knowledge gap, a lawyer, accountant, consultant, doctor, or teacher can be in a position to give priority to self-interest over the interest of the person who receives the services, without detection. Some professions operate with more or less explicit pledges to the clients not to do exploit their advantage in knowledge: “Trust me; although my own self-interest might dictate other actions, I undertake to serve in your best interest.” A conflict of interest situation is different from a real moral dilemma in that it does not constitute a choice between moral values that are on more or less the same equal footing, but are instead false dilemmas, in the sense of being temptations to choose the morally wrong option at the expense of the morally right one.
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Øyvind Kvalnes
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kvalnes, Ø. (2015). Conflict of Interest. In: Moral Reasoning at Work: Rethinking Ethics in Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137532619_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137532619_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53259-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53261-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Business & Management CollectionBusiness and Management (R0)