Associations and Affiliations
Conflicts of interest may include your associations or affiliations. For example, perhaps your brother-in-law owns his own construction company and you arc the project manager for a construction project that's just published an RFP. Your brother-in-law bids on the project and ends up winning the bid.
If you sat on the decision committee and didn't tell anyone about your association with the winning bidder, that is clearly a conflict of interest. If you influenced the bid decision so that it went to your brother-in-law, he benefited from your position. Therefore, you put your personal interests, or in this case the interests of your associations, above the project outcome. Even if you did not influence the decision in any way, when others on the project discover the winning bidder is your brother-in-law, they will assume a conflict of interest occurred. This could jeopardize the awarding of the bid and your own position as well.
The correct thing to do in this case would be to, first, inform the project sponsor and the decision committee that your brother-in-law intends to bid on the project. Second, refrain from participating on the award decision committee so as not to unduly influence others in favor of your brother-in-law. And last, if you've done all these things and your brother-in-law still wins the bid, appoint someone else in your organization to administer the contract and make the payments for the work performed by him. Also, make certain you document the decisions you make regarding the activities performed by him and keep them with the project files. The more documentation you have, the less likely someone can make a conflict of interest accusation stick.
Conflicts of interest may include your associations or affiliations. For example, perhaps your brother-in-law owns his own construction company and you arc the project manager for a construction project that's just published an RFP. Your brother-in-law bids on the project and ends up winning the bid.
If you sat on the decision committee and didn't tell anyone about your association with the winning bidder, that is clearly a conflict of interest. If you influenced the bid decision so that it went to your brother-in-law, he benefited from your position. Therefore, you put your personal interests, or in this case the interests of your associations, above the project outcome. Even if you did not influence the decision in any way, when others on the project discover the winning bidder is your brother-in-law, they will assume a conflict of interest occurred. This could jeopardize the awarding of the bid and your own position as well.
The correct thing to do in this case would be to, first, inform the project sponsor and the decision committee that your brother-in-law intends to bid on the project. Second, refrain from participating on the award decision committee so as not to unduly influence others in favor of your brother-in-law. And last, if you've done all these things and your brother-in-law still wins the bid, appoint someone else in your organization to administer the contract and make the payments for the work performed by him. Also, make certain you document the decisions you make regarding the activities performed by him and keep them with the project files. The more documentation you have, the less likely someone can make a conflict of interest accusation stick.
Vendor Gifts
Many professionals work in situations in which they arc not allowed to accept gifts in excess of certain dollar amounts. This might be driven by company policy, the department manager's policy, and so on. In my organization, it's considered a conflict of interest to accept anything from a vendor, including gifts (no matter how small), meals, even a cup of coffee. Vendors and suppliers often provide their customers and potential customers with lunches, gifts, ballgamc tickets, and the like. It's your responsibility to know if a policy exists that forbids you from accepting these gifts. It's also your responsibility to inform the vendor if they've gone over the limit and you arc unable to accept the gift.
The same situation can occur here as with the brother-in-law example earlier. If you accept an expensive gift from a vendor and later award that vendor a contract or a piece of the project work, it looks like and probably is a conflict of interest. This violates PMI guidelines and doesn't look good for you personally cither.