In response to a new banking regulation, the consulting department of your CPA firm has been retained to determine the amounts that a bank client overcharged customers on their credit cards. A customer is entitled to either accept a refund equal to the amount calculated by the CPA firm or submit its disputed claim to arbitration against the bank. As a new partner at this CPA firm, you have been put in charge of dealing with all such claims, which encompasses over 40,000 bank customers.
In reviewing this list of claimants, you noticed that one of the bank's customers is your former college roommate. You still socialize with this former roommate frequently. Does your CPA firm have a conflict of interest in determining the refund amount owed to your former roommate?