Policy solutions to conflicts of interest: the value of professional norms

Sunita Sah

Behavioural Public Policy, 2017, vol. 1, issue 2, 177-189

Abstract: Advisors, such as physicians, financial advisors, lawyers and accountants, often face a conflict of interest – that is, a clash between their professional and personal interests. Such conflicts can lead to biased and corrupt advice. In this paper, I focus on how conflicts of interest can cause good people to unintentionally cross ethical boundaries and how we can avoid succumbing to this bias. I first discuss two mechanisms through which advisors may convince themselves to accept conflicts of interest while vehemently believing that they remain unbiased: (1) a sense of entitlement; and (2) a sense of invulnerability created by their belief in their own professionalism. I then discuss several proposed policy solutions to manage conflicts of interest, such as education and training, sanctions, second opinions and disclosure policies. These proposed solutions for dealing with conflicts of interest are largely based on inaccurate intuitions regarding the psychological processes that underlie them; consequently, these policies tend to fail or have unintended consequences. In the absence of eliminating conflicts of interest, solutions that are more likely to be successful consist of identifying and changing the professional norms that exert powerful influences on employee behaviour.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:bpubpo:v:1:y:2017:i:02:p:177-189_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Behavioural Public Policy from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().