Critics charge that self-regulatory schemes may effectively protect principals against the most reprehensible misdeeds of trustees who are weak and marginal. But, under such arrangements, questionable activities that are standard professional practices or more serious abuses that are committed by mainstream practitioners may be ignored. Conflict of interest is intrinsically untrustworthy because it directly violates norms of disinterestedness. Self-regulation is a form of institutionalized conflict of interest; financial reporter Lee Berton (1986) proclaims the concept "oxymoronic."

DEFINE: Defines self-regulation as a form of institutionalized conflict of interest, contrasting it with the disinterestedness norm it violates.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 115