Conflict of interest? (Rants and Raves).

I am working for a manufacturing and distribution company that is going through an ERP implementation. I found the article "Jack Be Nimble" (September 2001) very interesting in light of the rigidity and complexity of the software that is being implemented. I was about to distribute the article to senior managers in the organization when I realized that the article was written by the product marketing manager of a company that is advertising its own software solution in Management. Although I have confidence that Management is careful in selecting unbiased material to be published in its magazine, I think that in all fairness to the reader you should have a written policy stating the writer's link to any advertiser (current or past). There should, at the very least, be a disclaimer included with the article so that the reader is well informed of the possible conflict of interest. The current lack of transparency could tarnish the reputations of Management and CMA Canada as independent sources of information fo r financial professionals. So, in all fairness to the senior managers here, I will let them know that this article was written by an advertiser in Management and I will let them decide if they should discard the author's perspective as a biased one.

Jean-Francois Grenon, CMA candidate

Senior Financial Analyst

Straumann USA

Waltham, Mass.

Editor's response

We can understand your concern that the article may be perceived to be biased because it was written by a senior management professional (a CMA) who works for a software company that happens to advertise in our magazine. In the past, we have published a number of articles submitted by various companies or organizations, some of whom are advertisers and some who are not. Since our mandate is to educate our readers and to provide them with useful information from a range of expert sources, we encourage companies to submit articles that provide a broad, objective perspective on business subjects that we feel will be of value to our readers. Quite often, the authors of these articles are CMAs since many of CMA Canada's members occupy strategic management positions in companies. We stipulate very clearly that such articles are not to be used as a platform or venue to promote products or services. We are very selective about which articles we publish, and any material that we deem to be self-promotional is removed from the article.

There will always be a perception of bias in any article, since it represents the author's opinion. However, we do not feel that having an article written by one of our advertisers compromises our editorial integrity, nor is it a conflict of interest; if the article is generic, educational and well-written. In the interests of disclosure, we ensure that an author's link with a particular company is indicated clearly in the biographical note at the end of the piece, whether or not that company advertises in the magazine. As you have suggested, however, it may be of value to include a disclaimer in our masthead indicating our policy on vendor-submitted articles to ensure our readers understand the safeguards we use to eliminate perceived conflict of interest. We thank you for this suggestion, and will carefully consider including such a disclaimer.