Conflict of Interest

This article is for Administrators who would like to understand how to manage conflicts of interest (COI) declarations in the assessment process.

When setting up an Assessment Round, you can enable Conflicts of Interest (COI) so that Assessors are asked to declare whether they have a conflict before assessing an Application. If an Assessor declares that they do, they're required to add a comment explaining it, and you'll be notified so you can review it.

Important: declaring a Conflict of Interest is not just informational. It blocks that Assessor from completing the Assessment — they can't submit a score, and that Assessment is left out of the round's scoring — until you review and Revoke the conflict.

1

Enable Conflicts of Interest for an Assessment Round

• When creating (or editing a draft) Assessment Round, go to the Workflow step and tick Would you like the Assessors to be able to declare a Conflict of Interest?

• Choose what information Assessors see when making that declaration — Application Title, Applicant Name, and/or Collaborator List — and optionally add your own help text.

• This setting can't be changed once the Assessment Round is published.

2

What happens when an Assessor declares a conflict

• When an Assessor starts an Assessment, they're asked whether they have a conflict of interest.

• If they answer Yes, they must add a comment explaining the conflict before it can be submitted.

• Once submitted, that Assessor immediately loses access to complete, view, or export that Application until the conflict is resolved.

• You (and any other Admin with access to that Funding Round) receive a notification and a dashboard task to review it.

3

Locate and view the COI comment

• On the Conflicts of Interest menu, locate the COI and click View Comment.

View Comment

This will show the comment the Assessor made regarding their COI.

COI Comment

4

Revoke the COI

• Using the information in the comment, decide whether to revoke the COI by clicking Revoke.

• Add your own comment explaining your decision, then click Confirm.

Revoking lets the same Assessor regain access and continue the Assessment — it doesn't reassign the Application to someone else. The Assessor is automatically notified by email once you revoke it.

Revoke COI

5

If you don't revoke the COI

• The Assessment stays blocked indefinitely — the Assessor cannot access, complete, or export that Application, and their Assessment is permanently excluded from the round's scoring.

• There's no automatic reminder or escalation, and no automatic reassignment to a different Assessor. It's on you to review and act on outstanding Conflicts of Interest.