In my professional life I had to constantly be mindful of potential conflicts of interest as well as the appearance of improper conduct. A very wise mentor taught me early on, "If I have to give serious thought to whether or not any action by me would be a conflict of interest or considered improper, I simply assume that it would be either or both and I just don't do it."
That can easily be transferred to every day life in the woodshop and elsewhere. On nearly every occasion that I deviated from sound safety practices and paid a price, I had that nagging thought before I did it that asked, "are you sure this is safe. . .?" Turns out that often it was not. ;-)