Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure
What It Is
A conflict-of-interest disclosure is a voting member’s declaration of the outside interests that could bear on their committee’s work: the firms they own or work for, the family members who supply the association, the organizations whose boards they sit on. Many associations require every director to disclose once a year, or once per term. In this product the association chooses the period, and each day the product opens one disclosure for every current voting appointment that owes one, due thirty days after the period or the appointment begins, and tells the member it is due. The form itself runs in Submissions, which reviews what was disclosed and accepts or flags it, recording the interests named. A disclosure is identified by the member, the appointment and the period it covers.
What It Is Not
A disclosure is not a recusal. A disclosure is a standing declaration for a period; a recusal is a voter standing aside from one decision. A disclosure can prompt a recusal, but a member may recuse without any disclosure and a disclosure does not recuse anyone by itself. It is also not the Submissions submission that carries the form: Submissions owns the form and its review; Committees owns the obligation, its due date and the outcome it uses.
How It Is Used
Governance staff turn on annual or per-term disclosures, watch which members still owe one, and start the form in Submissions for a member. Members see their disclosures and due dates in the portal. When a decision is linked to an organization or a person, for example a contract with a firm, the product suggests the recusal of any voter whose accepted or flagged disclosure names that firm, with the reason; staff holding the sensitive disclosures permission see the suggestion, and in the portal a voter sees only their own. The voter, or staff on their behalf, records the recusal with a reason before voting. Good use catches every conflict before the vote and keeps what members disclosed private. What goes wrong: Submissions is not deployed for Committees yet, so the form cannot actually be started, and the portal refuses a recusal from a decision still in draft.
Its Facets
The disclosure period decides how often members disclose. Each obligation carries its period and due date. The review outcome says whether a disclosure stands. The disclosed interests are the organizations and people declared. A recusal stands a voter aside from one decision. A recusal suggestion is the prompt that a standing disclosure touches a decision. Overdue disclosures are an attention line for staff, kept off Home until the portal phase.
How It Relates
Disclosures are owed by voting appointments on committees owned by the Committees module. Their interests name organizations and contacts held in CRM. Submissions runs the form and its review and also checks its own reviewers against disclosed interests. Recusals belong to decisions, whose rules say whether the recused leave the count or count as absent.
What It Could Become
The disclosures milestone carries no product decisions yet. Open edges: whether staff may record a disclosure by hand while Submissions is not available, whether a merged contact’s disclosures should follow the surviving contact, whether recusal from a draft decision is allowed, and whether a flagged disclosure should block the member from voting rather than only prompt a recusal.