The COI was due to the employee. Not the firm. Time and again I agreed that KW should NOT have stayed on the job.
What I do not agree with is that she "must of been aware" of the conflict. That's conjecture that I just do not agree with, at all. I've seen these innocent COI come up. And so as I told DoGood, to which Senti responded back in January, is this.
I imagine she was completely unaware of the conflict when she signed up. -- RK
So please do not suggest that I don't see a conflict. I do. It is a conflict because of how close the vendor relationship is between NWBO and Cognate. What I do not see is that the checks and balances COI measures would have: (a) automatically viewed vendors competitive relationship as conflicts; and (b) found the vendor board staffing "potential" conflict to consider for review and clear with the client before staffing.
And so to be clear I also disagree with is there was a huge error on OP's parts to have not caught it before day one. It was a "potential" staffing conflict. It would not necessarily been "red flagged" for her not to be on the project. It was not a firm conflict. It normal cases it doesn't even represent a staff COI. You at first suggested OP should not have allowed KW work with NWBO and I told you that wasn't true. But yes, I do think it could have been noticed beforehand. And I agree they could have done a better job at researching the company so that a light-bulb moment went off on KW's end, and she could have seen it before signing the NDA and sitting in at the kickoff meeting. But, this is a rare situation. Vendor competitive relationships do not normally present "red flag" conflicts, so that is why I do not fault OP for not finding it. The depths of the "potential" conflict are not known until staff are sometimes on the jobs. Small firms don't have the resources of larger firms. I've been at both. The fact that all firm have dedicated departments or employees who look out for conflicts means that COI come up, at all times of engagements. That doesn't mean they are perfect at avoiding entering into consulting relationships and staffing it appropriately all the time. Innocent conflicts happen every day. I believe this to be one. Obviously in this case OP, in their words "terminated the engagement to avoid a "potential" conflict of interest". And by that I mean, they suggested the determination was open to interpretation and would not necessarily been caught in the NDA process. They may have left the engagement as a "continue" in some of these "potential" COI instances. But OP made the firm decision to pull out altogether as that what was best for the client in this instance. Not everything can be learned from a single press release; and so I reserve judgment and have given KW the benefit of the doubt. And if my response is "long winded" (again) it is because my opinion on that front has become such big topic of conversation. If someone doesn't see what this iHub believes their views are interrogated and their opinion tortured. And worse than that, new meaning is being implied to words that were not originally there.
But what I do see is that in NWBO's case, they can not afford a $1.5 monthly fee added to their run rate, so it's a good thing this agreement ended. If NW didn't suggest it, I doubt they would have pursued it on their own. It was unfortunate that the COI occurred, but it did. And that doesn't mean their was malicious intent on KW's part. Until it is proven otherwise, I'm going to see her as innocent because the firm did the right thing to avoid conflict. My last $.02 hopefully. :)
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