Interviewing someone from an opposite “frictioned background” is not considered a conflict of interest in law or ethics.

“Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards.

In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest.

I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”

You can’t do any of those things with ethnic bias.

Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.