Conflicts of Interest

Overview/Description
 Have you noticed lately that more and more of the country's top executives are being condemned in the media for unethical business practices? Could you or one of your employees be next? How can you ensure that your employees are prepared to handle the legal and ethical challenges that they face each day? This course will help you by examining one of the most common legal, ethical, and behavioral problems facing many of today's decision-makers--conflict of interest. A conflict of interest can transpire if an employee has an existing or potential interest, financial or non-financial, that may impair his or her judgment when performing job-related duties. Unfortunately, decisions that may be considered a conflict of interest can occur innocently by simply not knowing the facts. Since being, or staying, in business is all about making the right decisions, it is critical for your managers and executives to understand what a conflict of interest is so they can ensure effective, fair, and legal practices are followed when making or reviewing business decisions. This course will provide you with the fundamental skills that will enable you to identify potential conflicts of interest and develop a policy to help your employees understand how to ensure the integrity of the company by avoiding, managing, and resolving such conflicts. Armed with this knowledge you will have increased confidence that business relationships will be legitimate and ethical, thus avoiding policy violation issues.

Target Audience
 All employees with an emphasis on management and human resource personnel who need to understand and implement compliance policies

Expected Duration
3.5 hours

Lesson Objectives:

Defining a Conflict of Interest

  • recognize the importance of defining conflicts of interest.
  • identify examples of situations that present potential conflicts of interest.
  • assess the potential for a conflict of interest occurring in a hypothetical business decision.
  • identify examples of the required components of a conflicts of interest policy.
  • use standard components to develop a comprehensive conflict of interest policy in a workplace scenario.

    • Ensuring Professional Behavior

  • recognize the importance of ensuring professional behavior in the workplace.
  • select examples of the rules for appropriate customer and supplier relationships.
  • apply the rules to appropriately handle customer and supplier relationships in a given workplace example.
  • match procedures for disclosing potential conflicts of interests with examples.
  • follow the proper procedures to disclose a potential conflict of interest in a given workplace scenario.
  • select examples of conflict-of-interest policy violations.

    • Course Number: HR0163