How do I manage other people's money and keep a clear conscience?
You serve two masters. One pays you. One trusts you with what they cannot easily replace. Most days you manage both fine. Then a moment comes where their interests split. You choose — often before you notice you are choosing. That is the real problem, not the rare dramatic case. The comfortable story is that policy or complexity will resolve this for you. It will not. What is yours to control is your judgment, applied before you act, and your willingness to say your reasons out loud. Start there.
You do not need a better system. You need one fixed test, applied before every decision: would I make this same choice if it were my own money, my own risk, and the person could watch me decide? If the answer is no, stop. That hesitation is your answer — not a problem to explain away.
What changes unlock by starting
- You stop dressing up conflicts of interest as complexity.
- You build one habit of judgment you can defend without notes.
- People trust you more, because your reasoning is visible, not hidden.
- You stop replaying the day's decisions at night, because you made them in the open.