General rules
FAR 9.505 requires contracting professionals to proactively identify and address organizational conflicts of interest to ensure fairness and integrity in federal contracting.
Overview
FAR 9.505 establishes the general rules for identifying, avoiding, neutralizing, or mitigating organizational conflicts of interest (OCI) in federal contracting. It sets out two core principles: preventing conflicting roles that could bias a contractor’s judgment and preventing unfair competitive advantage. The section emphasizes that each contracting situation must be evaluated individually, using common sense and sound discretion, as conflicts may arise even outside the specific scenarios listed in 9.505-1 through 9.505-4 or the examples in 9.508. Unfair competitive advantage is specifically defined to include situations where a contractor has unauthorized access to proprietary or source selection information. The rules in this section serve as the foundation for more detailed OCI guidance in subsequent sections.