GD wrote: "Accepting direct gifts from third parties, especially significant gifts such as large dollar items and titles, presents a real or perceived conflict of interest between an IT professional's client (either the customer or company that he or she works for) and that third party."
Well I can't entirely knock the 'perceived' CoI because you certainly perceive it and I'm sure you are not alone so I'll have to leave that aside. Obviously there are serious CoI's that might arise from taking 'gifts' in all sort of situations and noone is disputing that. This is not to say they anyone agrees the MVP programme falls on this side of the divide. There are awards in other professional fields that I see as clearly analogous with the MVP awards - particularly awards given to sportsmen. (In fact in the USA don't sportsmen receive MVP awards of another sort?) In cricket, for example, the BBC commentary programme "Test Match Special" gives an award at every match called the "Champagne Moment". This is given to the player who provides a moment of entertainment that the commentary team feel would have particularly pleased one of their former members, now sadly deceased. This award is not necessarily given for _good_ play, sometimes quite the opposite. Furthermore the 'title' is accompanied by a sizeable quantity of good quality Champagne. Is there a conflict of interests here? Would a player ever deliberately clown around to the detriment of his team? No, there isn't and he wouldn't. Zinedine Zidane has just won what is probably the most prestigious award of this sort in sport - World Footballer of the Year. There was nothing he could do to gain this award other than impressing the diverse judges with his performance in his job. There is nothing he can do to retain it save _continue_ to perform well. However the award is worth more in terms of prestige and cold hard cash opportunities than any of us is ever likely to amass in our lifetime. Is Zidane's professionalism in question? Do Real Madrid (his main employers) perceive a conflict of interests? I wouldn't have thought so. The far less glamorous and lucrative Microsoft MVP award is broadly similar. It has no set criteria that one can work towards but is given for excellent performance and there is no obvious way to retain the award. We're talking about a player-of-the-season award and nothing more. The information contained in this e-mail is intended for the recipient or entity to whom it is addressed. It may contain confidential information that is exempt from disclosure by law and if you are not the intended recipient, you must not copy, distribute or take any act in reliance on it. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete from your system. _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
