The Moment a Side Project Becomes a Workplace Problem
Most people keep their side projects at a reasonable distance from their day jobs. They might mention them once, gauge the room, and move on. But occasionally someone pushes past that unspoken boundary - bringing their self-published workbook, their workshop pitch, or their product line directly into the professional relationship that pays their bills. When that happens, the person on the receiving end needs a clear, repeatable response. Vagueness only prolongs the situation.
This is exactly the scenario that played out in a standardized patient (SP) program at a medical school, where a manager overseeing simulation-based medical education found herself fielding repeated attempts by a part-time teaching associate to sell her materials he had created. The resolution she reached - and the professional reasoning behind it - carries lessons that extend well beyond that niche setting into any workplace where someone’s personal ambitions start bleeding into their employment arrangement.
Understanding the Specific Stakes
The manager in question holds degrees in theater and creative writing and describes her role as a Standardized Patient Educator. She is not a physician. Her work involves preparing laypeople - standardized patients - to portray fictional patients during simulated clinical encounters with medical students. SPs are trained to provide feedback on the patient experience: whether they felt safe, cared for, and respected. Some also assess physical examination mechanics, evaluating whether a student placed a stethoscope in the correct location or applied appropriate pressure during an exam.
A smaller group within her program, teaching associates, actually instruct students in those physical examination techniques - the precise placement, the movement, the mechanics - so that faculty can concentrate on clinical reasoning. Her core responsibility is to support the curriculum that faculty have already established, not to introduce new content. That distinction matters enormously, because any feedback SPs deliver must align with what students have been taught in class, since students are assessed against faculty-set standards.
Why “Conflict of Interest” Is the Right Frame - and the Right Words
The part-time teaching associate had created workbooks related to the physical examination skills taught in the program. He pushed to sell them to the program, then offered to donate them when the sale was declined. He also proposed leading developmental workshops for other SPs, using his own curriculum. Each of these moves, while perhaps well-intentioned, created a real professional problem.
The manager declined the workbooks by naming it plainly: a conflict of interest. When he offered to donate instead, she held the line - still a conflict of interest, and the program needed to use materials already approved by faculty. This is worth examining from a career standpoint, because many people in similar positions soften refusals in ways that invite renegotiation. Saying “it’s not in the budget” opens the door to “I’ll give it to you free.” Saying “we already have materials” invites “mine are better.” The phrase “conflict of interest” does something different - it removes the negotiation entirely, because it’s a structural objection, not a preference.
She also declined the workshop proposal on a practical basis: the program couldn’t pay him for hosting those sessions. That was the simpler point to make. The deeper concern - that his curriculum could contradict the expectations already established in the SP manual and confuse the SPs who had been trained under it - was real, but the compensation point was clear and unambiguous. When you have two legitimate reasons to decline something, leading with the cleaner one is often the more effective professional move.
There was also the question of what to do with the workbook content itself. It wasn’t wholly consistent with what students had been taught in class. Bringing a self-published workbook to faculty - particularly as a non-physician - and suggesting it as a potential resource would have been politically unwise. She suggested instead that the teaching associate reach out directly to the one faculty member who had trained the SP-teachers and who already had an established relationship with him. Whether he ever made that contact, she doesn’t know. She didn’t hear about it again.
What This Looks Like From the Employee’s Side
It’s worth considering what the teaching associate was actually doing from a career development perspective, because it isn’t uncommon. He had built something - a workbook, a workshop concept - that he believed had value in the exact professional setting where he already worked. He had proximity to the decision-maker. He had existing credibility as a performer of the role. From his vantage point, this might have seemed like an obvious opportunity to expand his professional footprint.
The problem is that the employment relationship creates a power imbalance that makes this kind of pitch structurally awkward, regardless of how good the product might be. His manager was not a neutral buyer - she was also the person who determined his ongoing role in the program. Repeated pitching in that context shifts from self-promotion into pressure, even if that’s never the intent.
The Interview and Resume Angle Worth Taking Seriously
If you are someone who runs a side project - whether it’s a workbook, a consultancy, a course, a product line - and you also hold a part-time or contracted role somewhere, the professional boundary question matters before you ever mention it to your employer. There are three questions worth asking yourself before you bring a personal project into a workplace conversation.
First: does your project compete with, contradict, or complicate the work your employer is paying you to do? In this case, the workbook contained content that wasn’t consistent with faculty-approved curriculum. That’s not a minor gap - it’s a structural problem that would affect how students were evaluated. Second: are you in a position where your employer has authority over your ongoing employment? Pitching to someone who controls your schedule and your future shifts the dynamic in ways that are hard to walk back. Third: is there a conflict of interest, actual or perceived, in the transaction you’re proposing? A part-time employee selling materials to the program they work for clears that bar, even if the materials are donated rather than purchased.
On a resume or in an interview, side projects can be genuine assets - they demonstrate initiative, domain knowledge, and follow-through. But how you describe the relationship between your side work and your employed work signals your professional judgment. Saying “I developed supplementary teaching materials and offered them to colleagues in appropriate contexts” reads very differently than implying you tried to sell curriculum to the program you were working for. The facts might be the same; the framing is everything.
After the Conversation Ended
The manager used the language recommended to her: she thanked him, told him she wouldn’t be purchasing the materials due to the conflict of interest, declined the donation on the same grounds, reiterated the need for faculty-approved materials, and wished him well in finding the right audience for his work. He thanked her, and the subject never came up again. He continued teaching in the program.
That outcome - professional, undramatic, permanent - is what a clean refusal can produce. It didn’t require escalation, HR involvement, or any formal process. It required precision: using the right words, holding them under pressure, and not softening the position when a workaround was offered.
The part-time teaching associate’s workbooks presumably still exist somewhere, looking for an audience outside the simulation center where he works. At whatever price he’s set for them, they’ll need to find buyers who don’t also sign his timesheet.
