COI policies have contributed to a working culture that’s antithetical to Indigenous ways of working, Aiden Cyr writes. He talks to four Indigenous social impact leaders whose insights suggest that the path forward may instead lie in “mutuality of interest.”
As a young Métis person entering the non-profit workforce, I quickly noticed the discomfort that people and organizations felt around me and others who found it natural to leverage our existing trust with family, friends, and other networks to achieve a mission. One of the first documents I was handed as a new employee was a package that included a conflict-of-interest (COI) policy. The document, using legal jargon, explained that as an employee I had a personal responsibility to disclose how prior experiences and relationships I held could be perceived as a risk to the organization. I was confused because in my interview it seemed that my experience and knowledge of Indigenous communities was a determining factor in my securing the role. Now in this document I was meant to list how those same experiences and relationships could bias my perspective and pose a risk to the organization?
When I sought an explanation from my manager, I was surprised to learn that it was simply to protect the organization from legal risk and I had nothing to worry about. Nonetheless, the idea that I had to sign a policy I did not agree with did not sit comfortably with me. I was used to working with family to advance the interests of my community. How could I properly advocate for my community if I was not supposed to work closely with the network I already had? How could I be expected to understand the clear separation between the personal and professional, when it was all my life, all my network? I was only beginning to understand how much legal risk and the perception of bias shapes how the non-profit sector works. COI policies were meant to guide ethical decision-making internally; instead, they’ve contributed to a distrust-by-default working culture that’s antithetical to Indigenous ways of working.
I was used to working with family to advance the interests of my community. How could I properly advocate for my community if I was not supposed to work closely with the network I already had?
Sensing that I wasn’t the only one who’d felt this tension at the workplace, I sought to interview four Indigenous social impact leaders about whether they, too, had noticed the unintended consequences of a heavily risk-averse approach to COI. The full insights from the interviews can be found below, in the “In conversation” section. These leaders describe a “zero-trust environment” that can deter fruitful collaborations and the hiring of the most qualified people – and cause excessive administrative burden, especially among resource-constrained Indigenous organizations. Ultimately, these leaders’ insights inform an alternative culture that could serve as a stronger foundation for resolving ethical dilemmas and could rejuvenate public trust.
COI policies: A blunt tool to limit legal and organizational risk
Meaningful partnerships, collective action, and community work that makes a difference in the non-profit sector are all based on trust. Without that trust, the sector’s greatest achievements would remain elusive. Yet recent studies show that trust in public institutions is eroding, especially the government, the media, and the charitable sector. A pre-COVID Gallup study reported that “32% of people globally lack confidence in charities.” Since then, the sector has been asked to do more with less, placing it under further stress. In Canada, the public’s lack of trust is especially understandable given the past two decades of high-profile COI scandals, whether it be the malpractice of the credit rating agencies that led to the 2008 financial crisis, the 2012 Senate expenses scandal, or the anti-meritocratic 2018 We Charity grant contracting.
In response to growing concerns, COI policies have been widely adopted throughout the non-profit sector. The policies are meant to protect an organization’s reputation and its legal liability from financial self-dealing among its employees, including using one’s publicly responsible position to further private interests, or exploiting relationships and interests that could lead to biased decision-making. Essentially, they exist to limit legal and organizational risk from individual action. It’s important to note that these conflicts are not illegal – but if they are improperly managed, they can run afoul of corruption laws and lead to instances of fraud and breaches of fiduciary duty. There is a fundamental tension, however, between the stated purposes of transparency, accountability, and preventative action that COI policies are meant to achieve and the distorted culture of distrust and risk aversion that they have enabled.
Experts argue that organizations already struggle to grasp the scope of COI, noting that the practical application of COI policies has been further muddled by their growing complexity. David Renz, director emeritus of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership, highlighted this issue in a 2019 edition of Non-Profit Quarterly, noting that “Conflict of interest may be among the least understood governance and leadership challenges facing today’s charitable nonprofits.”
Conflict of interest may be among the least understood governance and leadership challenges facing today’s charitable non-profits.
David Renz, Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership
The impossible challenge lies in developing clear guidelines for the complex web of relationships among staff, boards, and partners while managing separate strategies for real, perceived, or apparent conflicts on a per case basis. These layers constrain both proactive and reactive ethical decision-making for the sector’s leadership. While leaders are told that perception matters as much as reality in conflicts of interest, they are not equipped with concrete tools to address these situations appropriately. The unique contexts of non-profit organizations further complicate consistent policy application, and the complexity or breadth of current policies often leads to hesitation – either in failing to enforce them or in overreacting. This situation reveals that standard COI policies are no longer effective for the sector’s present needs or future direction.
Consequently, given these warring imperatives, managers have created their own rules of thumb to eliminate threats as they see fit. The result has been the rise of a culture of risk aversion. According to Jan Masaoka, CEO of the California Association of Nonprofits, sector leaders make “two oddly opposite mistakes” on COI. Too often, she argues, they employ an overly narrow and legalistic definition of COI and “focus only on matters of [personal] financial gain” while also being quick to “judge, label, and complain about any kind of relationship . . . that they do not like, as a conflict of interest.” Today, this culture of risk aversion dominates the sector’s approach to new relationships, collaborative partnerships, and bold investments, and thereby constrains the sector’s capacity to deliver the innovation needed to regain public trust. This has led some leaders, including Masaoka, to question whether COIs should even be discussed or whether the focus should be on the idea of a conflict of loyalty.
Still, we see no change in the culture of conflict. Perhaps this is because the policy regimes we’ve set up, like COI, are based solely on ideas of “impartiality,” “objectivity,” and individual responsibility. Because COI policy seeks to constrain the definition of working relationships and default to risk aversion out of fear, leaders have been forced to become risk managers without the context. When that pressure has been placed on individual workers implicitly, it contributes to eroding trust and hesitancy around risk. For Indigenous communities and social impact leaders, this hesitancy has dramatic consequences.
Today, amidst a renaissance of Indigenous philosophy and culture, it’s easier to question the Eurocentric ideas that inform COI tools, whether the emphasis on individual rather than collective responsibility, or overzealous interpretations of impartiality and objectivity. I was eager to investigate whether there were more effective methods of resolving complex ethical dilemmas in the workplace.
We frequently hear Indigenous cultures described as “relationships-based,” but we often forget the rich depth of Indigenous philosophy, language, and story that informs the concepts of relationships and community. The Cree (Nehiyawak), Anishinaabe, and Dene, among many others, have distinct teachings around relationships. The concept of kinship and responsibility to each other and all life in the natural world is beautifully described in Cree languages as Wahkohtowin. Other teachings also demonstrate interconnectedness or focus on relational accountability (including healthy conflict) as ways to build and maintain strong communities. These teachings have been passed down orally in Indigenous languages for centuries, and while their true beauty comes from the stories spoken by Elders, parents, and leaders within the community, persistent initiatives to safeguard Indigenous languages and translate concepts for a non-Indigenous audience have come a long way within the truth and reconciliation era. While disrupting existing thought on COI policy through an Indigenous lens might not resolve the great crises of our time, it can certainly demonstrate that challenging the norms could allow us to work much better together.
In conversation: Indigenous leaders offer a way forward
The leaders I talked to collectively hold decades of experience as non-profit executives, entrepreneurs, board and advisory members, and of course as cultural leaders in their respective First Nation and Métis communities. I was curious whether they also held doubts about the current approach to COI in the workplace. All four said they were very familiar with COI, but few had been involved in the development of COI policies or enforcing an offence. They all said it affected how they worked and with whom they worked.
Chris Googoo, of the We’koqma’q First Nation, is chief operating officer of Ulnooweg, a not-for-profit that provides financing and business support to Indigenous businesses in Atlantic Canada. He’s also executive director of the Ulnooweg Indigenous Communities Foundation. He says that the development of these policies is explicitly guided by non-Indigenous lawyers, whose advice is to typically avoid anything that could be perceived as a COI. “When working with small, remote, Indigenous communities and the people you know, you feel you can’t hire the best,” he says.
When working with small, remote, Indigenous communities and the people you know, you feel you can’t hire the best.
Chris Googoo, Ulnooweg
Googoo says that when working in remote contexts where expertise might not be abundant or readily available, you find yourself in situations “where the expert happens to be your cousin.” But he says that the conflict guidelines mean you cannot – and should not – engage with your personal or family network, even if they are the best source for your work.
Googoo says he has never seen a COI policy that would take the local context into consideration. That lack of context carries dramatic consequences. “There is an extra cost of hiring individuals from outside the region, and those costs significantly increase for Indigenous organizations,” he says.
Similarly, Dianne Roussin, a member of the Skownan First Nation who serves as project director for the Winnipeg Boldness Project and sits on several boards, including that of the Winnipeg Foundation, says that working on Indigenous issues in Canada means you’re working with a relatively small circle of people. Because they are bonded by strong kinship and family ties, Roussin says that Indigenous people have no choice but to use the skills of family and friends to manage challenges and advance change. “I go to my family first when I need to get something done because it’s who I know best, whether it’s building a deck, managing finances, or cooking for a gathering,” she says. But the risk aversion baked into conflict policies means that even in a position of authority, she can’t hire or seek help from those she knows best – and who know best.
Accountability is reciprocal and built into . . . relationships. You’re able to be more accountable because it’s a relationship you hold close; we can be bossy and enforce our standards more easily.
Dianne Roussin, Winnipeg Boldness Project
Instead of making a COI policy the first thing a new employee signs, organizations should be stressing a vision and how it can be attained, Roussin says. Merit-based practices and accountability are important values in the modern workplace, she agrees, but for Indigenous Peoples things go a step further. “Accountability is reciprocal and built into how people form and maintain relationships,” she says. That means that Indigenous employees and employers can be “doubly hard” on one another.
“You’re able to be more accountable because it’s a relationship you hold close; we can be bossy and enforce our standards more easily,” Roussin says. The path forward may lie not within conflict guidelines but in the “mutuality of interest,” she believes.
Jeff Ward, who is Ojibwe and Métis and a member of Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation in Manitoba, is the founder and CEO of Indigenous technology company Animikii and an experienced board member. As an Indigenous leader, he runs his company differently, merely following the way he’s always understood work. “For an Indigenous person, the purpose of work is often to support the community. So how can you support [community members] without being intimately involved?” He acknowledges that it was difficult to find a match when searching for funding and partnerships, and he had to search for socially grounded lenders who understood how Indigenous companies might view work differently.
Ward believes that COI rules, particularly those around perceived conflict, are having a doubly negative impact on Indigenous organizations. Already, Indigenous organizations are mired in racial stereotypes, fending off tropes that they hire only relatives or that there’s rampant nepotism at band council offices, he says.
Ward has been called out because he hugged a client – a sign of respect or closeness – before or after a meeting. These bonds can be “inherently beneficial” to building the trust needed to chart a new way of working, he says. He points to the Indigenous belief in the concept of “All My Relations,” showing a mutuality of interest between all of us, because we are all connected. But people in the working world have difficulty embracing this concept, he says.
Working alongside your community makes everyone stronger and more resilient. Rowing in a canoe through treacherous waters involves trust and connections to get us where we need to go.
Jeff Ward, Animikii technology company
Managing unfair criticism of COI and favouritism can be difficult, but he wants more people to understand how working alongside your community makes everyone stronger and more resilient. “Rowing in a canoe through treacherous waters involves trust and connections to get us where we need to go,” he says.
Justin Wiebe is a Métis citizen from Saskatchewan and head of partnership development at the Mastercard Foundation. His work focuses on investing in Indigenous youth and communities to lead solutions in their communities. As a funder, he says his organization has come a long way in forging transparent relationships and addressing the “deep power imbalance” that exists between funder and recipient. He is an advocate for the Cree Michif concept of kîyokêwin – building a trusting and transparent relationship by spending time visiting each other beyond work. “Coming by to my home or a park for a visit goes a long way toward accountability and transparency compared to asking someone to submit a report in a week.” Kîyokêwin, Wiebe explains, is an undervalued way of transferring knowledge because it uses storytelling, “which is core to the way we work.”
Relationships and connections feed into decisions and shape the worldview of the types of things we are looking to fund. Those are strengths, not things to limit.
Justin Wiebe, Mastercard Foundation
Wiebe says that since his organization understands the centrality of relationships and trust as evidenced by the intentional hiring of Indigenous people who possess that lived experience, conflict guidelines do not restrict his day-to-day work. “I don’t aspire to objectivity or neutrality, because in the funding world those [aspirations] hinder our ability to fund the most innovative and impactful things,” he says. He adds that “relationships and connections feed into decisions and shape the worldview of the types of things we are looking to fund. Those are strengths, not things to limit.”
He also says that there is heightened scrutiny of Indigenous and Black communities and organizations that are more likely to share resources with close community contacts. “White people are assumed to be inherently neutral and objective,” he says. Instead of focusing on risk, Wiebe believes the sector should focus on “ways to actually build mechanisms that recognize relationships and view it as expertise.”
The sector is experiencing a greater demand for its services without the financial capacity or the internal trust needed to fuel a culture of innovation that can address the current polycrisis of poverty, climate change, and social inequality. For Indigenous people, the answers to community problems have always been rooted in trust, through the power of community and the relationships that bond us together. For non-Indigenous and Indigenous workplaces alike, organizing policy around concepts like mutuality of interest might unlock easier pathways to collaboration and forge the trust-filled networks the non-profit sector needs. Nothing else appears to have worked. A re-evaluation of the culture around conflict of interest, through an Indigenous lens, might be the solution to the waning trust of the sector. It’s a solution sitting right before our eyes.
This is the second piece from Aiden Cyr, one of five writing fellows working with The Philanthropist Journal. The fellowship is focused on the future of work and working and was made possible through funding and support from the Workforce Funder Collaborative.
Editor’s note: This article was edited on January 16, 2025, to clarify and correct Justin Wiebe’s background and his role at the Mastercard Foundation.
