When was the last time you read the civil service code, or your own organisation’s code of conduct, and then made a conflict of interest declaration?
If you did, and not all do, what did you think? Did you view it as an irritating bit of bureaucratic compliance, or actually, an important part of being a public servant?
Last month, we reported that many public bodies lack an effective system for managing conflicts of interest. Ninety-one percent of public bodies have systems that cover senior staff, but only 40% extend these to cover all their staff. Of the systems of declaration that do exist, we found that many fall short of best practice – a working central register that can be inspected by those that need to do so.
In the remaining 60% of bodies that don’t require all staff to declare their interests once a year, civil servants are still expected to tell their line managers if they think they have, or could reasonably be perceived to have, a potential conflict of interest. But people very rarely check whether this happens and record keeping can be sporadic.
We think that many people outside of government would find this lack of focus on declaring interests surprising, especially given high-profile cases of perceived or actual conflicts of interest in the news. After all, in government, so-called “junior staff” have a lot of delegated responsibility, access to sensitive information, and make significant regulatory and spending decisions.
In most professions that involve handling other people’s money and interests – law, finance, accounting, surveying, medicine – regulators have very clear views on how organisations manage these conflicts and will inspect (and fine) those that fail to live up to their expectations.
We recommended that Cabinet Office beef up its guidance with minimum expectations for the governance, systems and processes that public bodies need to have in place.
We also published a good practice guide that sets out what this should cover. In particular, we want to see:
- a mandatory annual declaration of interests by all staff, including a "nil return" when they have nothing to declare;
- a searchable central register in each organisation that ensures those who need to help manage conflicts know about them;
- mitigations agreed with some form of central support and advice; and
- checks that this is working as intended.
Our hope is that civil servants and other public officials would welcome tighter management of potential conflicts.
First, it protects both you and the organisation. Conflicts of interest are a normal part of our working life and most mitigations for most conflicts can be fairly simple. Often, telling colleagues that you have an interest is all that is necessary. At other times it’s important to recuse yourself from certain decisions or projects.
The key test is one of perception. Would a reasonable person think it could pose a conflict and that the agreed mitigation is proportionate to the risk? That means it’s not just your view of the conflict that matters – even if you know you can act objectively.
The reputational damage of not declaring something that someone else might perceive as a potential conflict can be bad for your organisation and devastating to you as an individual. Put simply, failure to realise when something might be considered a conflict and not recording the agreed actions are poor things to lose your job over.
Second, openness over potential conflicts is part of a healthy public service culture that supports the seven principles of public life – openness, selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, honesty and leadership.
Any system for managing conflicts of interest is to an extent reliant on individuals declaring their interests and being willing to agree appropriate mitigations. Whether they choose to do so is largely dependent on the organisation’s culture. After all, when deciding what to do in a situation, human psychology leads us to ask ourselves: “what are others doing?”
Good processes can be viewed as ways of communicating expectations. Seen this way, the ritual of making declarations can be just as important as a tool for reinforcing the desired culture for the organisation that upholds the principles of public life, as it’s a practical measure to detect and prevent conflicts from occurring.
Finally, most officials I meet really believe in the seven principles of public life and want to see them upheld.
Throughout our work, we saw examples of public servants trying to do the right thing when declaring and handling conflicts of interest, and often erring on the side of caution when implementing mitigations.
Unfortunately, although we asked to see how well conflicts were managed, we soon came across examples where this wasn’t the case and inadequate action was taken. Such cases let down those who do try their best.
So, if you’re asked to spend half an hour once a year to read through your code of conduct – perhaps even the civil service code – and to list any potential conflicts you have, see this as an important part of being a professional public servant, rather than another bit of compliance. It might feel like a chore at the time, but it’s in your own interest – and that of your organisation – to do it properly.
Joshua Reddaway is director of fraud and propriety at the National Audit Office