Conflict of interest

From EvaluationWiki

This occurs when the evaluator is playing, perhaps unwittingly, two roles with different expectations/obligations/motivations, and it may lead to bias in their reports. For example, the typical internal evaluator is often, sometimes chronically, in a COI because they are on the one hand expected/supposed to provide an objective evaluation of whatever they have been asked to evaluate; but on the other hand, they are anxious to preserve their own job, and perhaps the egos of their supervisor or coworkers, when the job prospects or the egos may be seriously damaged by a strongly critical report, which the facts might justify. This COI, between self-preservation and the duty to report truthfully, tends to make them pull their punches. Nor is the external evaluator free from COI, although it is somewhat less obvious: they are often well aware that a critical report would be most unwelcome by the client, and also anxious to obtain further assignments from this client. See the entry under General Positive Bias in Evaluation Thesaurus (Scriven: Sage, 1991).