Commissioner of the Anti-corruption Commission (KPK), Alexander Marwata, said conflict of interests correspond to corruption. Clash of personal or group interests against public interest has the potential to make someone behaving unethically.
“Not just unethical, but also having the potential to degrade personal integrity,” he said on Friday (10/3) at Faculty of Engineering UGM.
Becoming speakers in the Selected Course event at Electrial and Informatics Engineering Department, Alexander said there were a number of factors that make someone commit corruption or violate ethics and integrity. The main factor is individual one and greed.
“Their income is not adequate enough to live by because they want to live in luxury,” he said.
The former auditor in Financial Auditing and Development Agency said not supportive work environment may also drive someone to commit corruption. Besides, there is the push to be in power or be a leader in addition to individual behaviours.
“Corruption may also emerge because someone is forced to do it, for example to make their business run well,” he said.
Alexander said improving professionalism and integrity was one way to prevent corruption practices, because a professional will stick to ethics and integrity which will make them give services as best as they can to society. Alexander further asked the students to uphold integrity, be honest, disciplined, hard working, whilst not taking the right of others.
“If one is not honest, this is worrying already because a damaged character will be hard to fix,” he said.