Navigating apparent conflicts of interest, with Kasturi Venkatesh

Niyati Ahuja (www.reedsmith....) sits down with Kasturi Venkatesh ( / kasturi-venkatesh-ccep... ) , currently senior consultant for ethics and compliance at WSP USA, to discuss the complexities of conflicts of interest in professional settings. This episode examines the distinctions between real, potential and apparent conflicts, and how these issues can impact organizational trust and integrity. Listeners will gain actionable strategies for navigating ethical dilemmas and mitigating risks with transparency and fairness.
---more---
Transcript:
Intro: Welcome to Disputes in Perspective, a Reed Smith podcast. This podcast series will discuss disputes-related trends, hot topics, and developments occurring in the global legal landscape, and hopefully provide you with some helpful insights and practical tips. If you have any questions about any of the episodes, please feel free to contact our speakers.
Niyati: Welcome to Reed Smith's Disputes in Perspective podcast. I'm Niyati Ahuja, a senior associate in the Global Commercial Disputes and International Arbitration Group in New York. I'm dual-qualified in New York and India. My practice involves international arbitration, both commercial and investor state, litigation in New York courts, and some white-collar investigation. Today we have Kasturi Venkatesh with us. Kasturi is currently a senior consultant, ethics and compliance at WSB. Kasturi holds three degrees in law and has worked in compliance across different industries, including technology, civil engineering, immigration, and construction. She specializes in conflicts of interest, third-party risk management, and developing and implementing policies and procedures in-house. She also enjoys creating custom ethics and compliance programs for clients. Welcome, Kasturi. We're very pleased to have you here today.
Kasturi: Hi, Niyati. Thanks so much for inviting me to talk about conflicts. I want to start off by saying that all views are my own. They're not representative of my employer. And I'm doing this in my individual capacity. All examples are hypothetical. Thanks so much for having me again.
Niyati: Thanks, Kasturi. So getting right into it, please tell us more about your role and your background and how this area of law that is ethics and compliance interested you in the first place.
Kasturi: So this is really odd, but I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since eighth grade, right? And I was born in the US and mostly raised in India. And the education system there differs a lot from the US in the sense that you decide your path pretty much by 16, 17, 18. And you could specialize in science, math, or art. I chose science as it gave me the most options. But the back of my mind, I was like, oh, I know I want to do law. So end of 12th grade, my parents were like, what do you want to do? And I said, law. Right now, I hold three degrees in law, mostly focusing on business law. I was the teaching assistant for banking and finance law at a point, taught a few classes there. Now, my very first job out of my first law school was at a technology company. And I worked in the ethics and compliance department. Very green at that point. But the more I worked in it, the more I knew that this was something I could actually look at doing in the future, something really fun. I pivoted into immigration compliance after that, came back to ethics and compliance, and I truly enjoy it. It's like every day is a strategy or a logic puzzle. Where answers aren't black and white, you operate in a lot of gray in any company dealing with ethics and compliance. And there's always so much to learn in the field. I love interacting with people. There's a lot of that in the field. And a very strong community that wants to help.
Niyati: That is excellent. You've had a great career path so far, Kasturi. I'm sure it's going to only grow in the future. I wanted to, for our audience members, I wanted to ask a more basic question. Can you define what a conflict of interest is and explain why it's important for both individuals and organizations to recognize them?
Kasturi: Yeah, absolutely. So conflicts of interest and very broadly, let's say there are two interests and these could be multiple interests as well. that a single person holds, right? And one of them could be or is prejudicial to the other interest. Now, the interesting part is sometimes these interests may not necessarily be prejudicial or cause harm to the other interest. But when there is some aspect of a duty of care or a fiduciary duty to one interest. Holding both or multiple interests could appear conflicting. And because of this, identifying and mitigating these conflicts is so important. And of course, there are guidelines and disclosure requirements as well. But sometimes it's the liability repercussions. And when I talk about liability, I mean, financial, revenue-based...