There are two basic types of conflicts of interest: personal
and institutional. In any conflict of interest, two roles conflict in such a
way that one role can compromise the other.
The role compromised is the more legitimate of the two. In this essay, I
distinguish the two types and situate the public accountants involved in
insider trading in the personal rather than institutional type. I discuss two
specific cases, both of which resulted in the auditors being prosecuted, in
order to distinguish that outcome from the failure of society to come to grips
with some of the most important ongoing institutional conflicts of interest.
The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.
