CoI Severity Levels

While we cannot specify every possible type of CoI, and the severity may not be strictly correct for all cases of the below items, this serves as a rough guideline for identifying the severity of various common CoIs:

Low:

• Casual friendship
• One party owes the other some small amount of money
• Strong dislike or personality conflict

Medium:

• Close/Best friendship
• Cohabitation
• Romantic partnership
• Close working relationship outside POND (coworkers, volunteer organizations, etc.)

High:

• Complicated personal history (e.g. a bad breakup)
• Landlord/renter relationship
• Boss/employee relationship

Severe:

• Traumatic history (e.g. abuse, harassment, etc.)
• Marriage
• Financially or physically dependent/caretaker relationship

There are no strict rules for which situation warrants recusal when a CoI is present, but generally speaking Mediators should be wary about participating in anything but the lowest stakes Mediation process without at least some form of recusal beyond Low severity, and it may become very problematic if a single branch of POND Leadership consists mainly of people with High or Severe CoIs. Having multiple Medium CoIs at once should be treated as High or above.