Flight delayed, pending an ethical decision.
Most conflicts of interest don’t look like wrongdoing. They look like a kind offer from someone you like. Conflict of interest training has to show that moment.
The challengeConflicts of interest that look like kindness
The client needed people to recognise conflicts of interest and declare them, in a six-minute animated module. The difficulty is that the textbook definition, a division of loyalty between personal and business interests, describes nothing anyone feels in the moment. In the moment, it feels like friendship, a favour, an opportunity that would be rude to turn down.
What we deliveredA six-minute conflict of interest animation
- 1An Alignment Brief with the client’s ethics and compliance team: the everyday situations where conflicts appear, and the decision people need to make.
- 2A Story Blueprint built on one idea: freeze the story at the exact moment of temptation.
- 3A six-minute conflict of interest training animation, in several languages, with an airport story at its centre and a full transcript.
- 4A short practice activity where people sort everyday situations into conflict or no conflict, from using a work laptop for a weekend job to hiring a niece.
The idea, and why it workedFreezing the story at the moment of temptation
Josie is queuing to check in when Frank, a supplier she works with, appears. Same flight. He’s in business class, she’s in economy, and his air miles expire at the end of the month, so he offers her an upgrade, courtesy of his company. It sounds lovely. Then the airport announcer speaks: the flight is delayed, pending the outcome of an ethical decision. The whole terminal waits for Josie. She declines, because if she accepted, she might feel she owed Frank a favour the next time they negotiate.
It worked because the wrong answer was genuinely tempting, and the right one came with a reason people could feel, not just a rule they had to follow.
