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
individual or organization is involved in
multiple interests, one of which could
possibly corrupt the motivation.
The presence of a conflict of interest is
independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict
of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs.
So, for our purposes,
the SOI's are the appropriate discovery of a potential
conflict.