There’s no immediate conflict of interest though. No self-dealing has actually occurred yet, and you have to assume a tremendous amount of bad faith years in advance of reality to get there.

Suppose I am on the board of a wildlife preservation nonprofit, and I am thinking about starting a catering business, and talking to potential financial backers.

If you want to take it to the extreme, you could argue that I could award my catering company a lucrative contract to provide food for the nonprofits cafeteria. But that would be entirely speculative on your part. it would by no means justify immediately firing me from my position at the nonprofit. If you take those hypotheticals out far enough, you could basically argue anybody with any other job or role is potentially in conflict of interest. But again, doing that requires assuming a tremendous amount of bad faith.