Conflict of interest is not a moral failure but a situation in which two or more interests cannot coexist in the same context. It happens in advice, high management, between areas and also in the daily life of anyone. Normalizing this phenomenon takes the conversation out of people’s ground and takes it to the field of interests. The debate stops sounding as an accusation and becomes a design of solutions. This is Patricia Palomo’s thesis in “Conflict of Interests- In the limit of ethics”, a work that proposes to remove the stigma on the subject.
Patricia deals with the subject from professional experience, with more than twenty years in the financial market. In passages to banks, managers, brokerages and consulting, it has always found conflicts that influenced decision making. He saw closely how the theme gains negative connotation when trying to approach it openly and structured. “Throughout this time, I collected situations where conflict was often seen as something personalized. When trying to talk to someone about a conflict of interest situation, the person brought to the staff,” he says. Experience has shown that the difficulty is not to admit that conflicts exist, but in creating safe space to name them, understand them, and redesign processes so that decisions become better.
According to the author, conflicts of interest are not extinguished. They exist and will continue to exist. What management can mitigate is the unwanted outcomes that may arise from these tensions. For this it is necessary to return to the decision process and to identify at what extent an incentive was incorrect or dull and pushed the organization to an action with a result that no one wants. The adjustment begins by appointing the incentive that is out of plumbing, continues to recalibrate rewards and responsibilities and ends when verifying whether the choices have produced effects compatible with the company’s objectives and also the practical life of those who decide personal and family.
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When conflicts are ignored or hidden create short circuit in governance. Distorts incentives, corrode credibility in the face of audiences of interest, increase the chance of errors and get sick teams. The problem manifests itself on different plans within the same organization. Advice can carry particular interests that cross strategic decisions. Executives can omit alerts for self -preservation. Commercial and risky areas pursue legitimate goals that by nature come into tension. A counselor who depends financially on the chair tends to have less freedom to counteract the majority.
The answer is less in rhetoric and more in architecture. Generic policies are not enough. “It is necessary to map where conflicts arise, record occurrences, make explicit the incentives that move each agent and establish decision quality metrics,” says Patricia. In addition, committees with light mandate, affordable documentation, listening channels that actually work, and periodic evaluations are needed. These practices reduce opacity and improve institutional learning. “Ethics remains essential, but well -designed process is what guarantees predictability even when interests clash,” he says.
What matters to the market is the predictability of behavior. Investors do not seek perfection. Organizations that treat conflicts as a decision-making issue signal maturity, become more efficient, preserve reputations, and tend to access capital at lower costs. Thus is shortened the distance between what Brazil is in the real economy and what Brazil looks like in the portfolio of the great allocates.
