Before we all get too wound up about conflicts it may help to distinguish between the POTENTIAL for a conflict and ACTUAL conflicts which result in CORRUPT behaviour. A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation occurring when an <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual> individual or <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization> organization is involved in multiple <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_%28emotion%29> interests, one of which could possibly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupt> corrupt the motivation. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impropriety> impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption> corruption occurs. So, for our purposes, the SOI's are the appropriate discovery of a potential conflict. A recusal from voting is a way of mitigation. Philip