DEFINITION
Conflict of Interest
A conflict of interest exists where an employee's personal interest could improperly influence a business decision they influence or control. In transaction data it most often appears as an undisclosed relationship between an employee and a supplier.
The practical detection method is comparing vendor master data against employee master data for shared bank accounts, addresses, phone numbers, and tax identifiers, then testing whether those vendors received awards or payments.
Matches must be ranked rather than reported flat. A shared bank account with material spend is a substantive finding; a shared address in a dense urban area often is not.