Simply put, a conflict of interest is a situation where one's personal interests conflict with one's professional ones. Dr Michael McDonald , Director of the University of British Columbia Centre for Applied Ethics, defines a conflict of interest as ˜a situation in which a person, such as a public official, an employee, or a professional, has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her duties . [1] As you might have noticed from this definition, there is no need for the objective exercise of a person's work- related duties to be truly compromised, only that it ˜appears to be compromised.
Thus, using this definition, it seems clear that public relations professionals have a number of situations that present potential conflict situations, some of which are unique to PR, others that are common to all people in the work world today.
[1] McDonald, Michael [accessed 2 October 2003] Ethics and Conflict of Interest . http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/mcdonald/conflict.html