Conflict of Interest in Mold Testing: How to Spot the Red Flags

The Question Most People Never Think to Ask

When you hire someone to test for mold, here's the question that should immediately follow: does this person make more money if they find it?

That single question changes everything about how you evaluate your inspection results. And most homeowners never ask it — because it never occurs to them that the person they hired to diagnose a problem might profit from the diagnosis itself.

The mold industry has a fundamental structural problem that my nursing background prepared me to recognize immediately: many companies that "find" mold also happen to "fix" it — for thousands of dollars. In medicine, we have a name for this. It's called a conflict of interest. And it's considered so serious that entire regulatory frameworks exist to prevent it. The mold industry has no such frameworks.

How the Conflict Works

The Business Model

Here's the mechanism that creates the conflict, step by step:

1. Offer "free" or low-cost mold inspection. This is a customer acquisition cost — an investment, not a service.
2. Find mold. They almost always do, because every home has some mold spores. The question is whether those spore levels represent a problem — and that interpretation is where the conflict lives.
3. Recommend remediation. Performed by their own company, of course. The scope is determined by the same entity that profits from larger scope.
4. Profit from remediation contract. $5,000-$25,000+ per job. That's the real product. The inspection was just the door.

The inspection isn't the product — you are. The inspection is a sales funnel. Every "finding" moves you closer to signing a remediation contract with the same company that told you the problem exists.

The Incentive Problem

When testing and remediation are the same company, the incentive structure is fundamentally broken:

• Every positive finding generates revenue. Finding mold = potential remediation contract = money.
• Every negative finding costs them money. Finding nothing = no remediation sold = wasted trip.
• Borderline situations get interpreted upward. A reading that could go either way goes toward "problem" because that's the profitable interpretation.
• Scope recommendations expand to maximize contract value. Why recommend cleaning one bathroom when you could recommend treating three rooms?

I want to be careful here — this isn't necessarily conscious dishonesty. Most people in the remediation industry genuinely believe they're helping. But the incentive structure itself corrupts judgment in ways that even well-meaning professionals may not recognize. When your mortgage payment depends on finding serious mold problems, you develop a unconscious bias toward finding them. This is basic human psychology, and no amount of good intentions overrides it.

The Medical Parallel

My nursing background is what first made me see this clearly. In healthcare, the separation of diagnosis and treatment is considered foundational. Your doctor diagnoses the condition. The surgeon performs the operation. The pathologist independently verifies the tissue. Each entity serves as a check on the others.

Imagine a system where the surgeon decided whether you needed surgery, performed the surgery, and then certified that the surgery was successful — and the surgeon only got paid when surgery happened. You'd recognize that as dangerous immediately. That's exactly how most of the mold industry works.

Red Flags That Signal Conflict

"Free" Inspection Offers

If inspection is free, asking how the company pays its people and its bills reveals the answer: they subsidize free inspections with remediation sales. You're not the customer receiving a complimentary service — you're the lead entering a sales pipeline. More on this in my article about why "free" costs more.

Same-Day Remediation Quotes

"We found mold, and we can start remediation tomorrow." The immediate push to the next step — before you've had time to think, research, or get a second opinion — suggests the inspection exists specifically to generate remediation contracts. Legitimate findings can wait a week for you to make informed decisions.

No Third-Party Laboratory

Ask: "Which laboratory analyzes your samples? Can I see their AIHA accreditation?" If analysis is in-house, unspecified, or they can't name an independent accredited lab, there's no objective verification of their findings. You're trusting their interpretation of their own data.

Vague Scope Expansion

"While we're in there, we should also check..." or "Based on what we're seeing, I'd recommend also treating the..." The scope keeps growing because larger scope means larger contract. Without independent assessment, you have no way to evaluate whether the expanded scope is necessary or profitable.

Pressure Tactics

"This needs to be addressed immediately" or "Your family is at risk every day you wait." Legitimate inspectors present findings calmly and factually, then let you make decisions on your timeline. Sales professionals create urgency because urgency prevents you from getting second opinions.

No Post-Remediation Independence

Companies that remediate but don't require independent third-party verification of their work have no accountability for actual results. They're grading their own homework. Would you accept that from your child's teacher? Then don't accept it from a company charging you thousands.

The IICRC Standard

This isn't just my opinion or my personal business philosophy. The Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) — the mold industry's own standard-setting body — explicitly addresses this in their S520 Standard for Professional Mold Remediation.

The S520 states that conflict of interest exists when the same entity performs both assessment and remediation. The standard recommends separation precisely because the industry itself recognized the structural problem I'm describing. Many companies choose to ignore this recommendation because it's more profitable to control both sides of the transaction.

How Separation Protects You

Objective Findings

When I don't profit from remediation, I have no incentive to inflate findings. What I find is what's actually there — no more, no less. A small problem gets reported as small. A non-problem gets reported as a non-problem. My revenue is the same regardless of what I find.

Accurate Scope

Independent assessment determines what actually needs remediation — not what can be sold. In my experience, independent scope assessments typically result in 30-60% smaller remediation projects than conflicted assessments of the same property. That's not because I'm less thorough. It's because I have no incentive to pad the scope.

Negotiating Position

With independent documentation, you own your inspection data. You can present that report to three, four, five remediators and get competing bids. Competition keeps costs honest. Conflicted inspectors give you one option: them. That's not a market — that's a monopoly of one.

Verification

Independent post-remediation testing confirms the work was actually done properly. The company that did the remediation can't objectively verify their own work any more than a student can grade their own exam. Third-party verification is the only verification that means anything.

Why I Don't Remediate

I run my business as inspection and testing only. No remediation. No "sister company" that happens to remediate. No referral fees from remediators. When I find mold, I don't profit from what happens next. This was a deliberate business decision that costs me money — and I made it anyway.

Yes, I could make significantly more money offering remediation. Many inspectors do. Some of them are good, ethical people who genuinely try to be fair. But the incentive structure doesn't care about good intentions. The structure itself creates bias. The only way to eliminate that bias is to eliminate the financial connection between finding problems and fixing them.

When I find mold, I tell you what's there and what needs to happen. Then you get remediation bids from companies who compete for your business based on my independent documentation. That's how the system should work — and it's how it does work when you choose independent inspection.

Five Questions to Ask Any Mold Inspector

1. "Do you also offer remediation services?" — If yes, there's an inherent conflict. Period.
2. "Which independent laboratory analyzes your samples?" — They should name a specific, independently accredited lab without hesitation.
3. "Can I see your sample chain-of-custody documentation?" — Professional inspectors document every sample from collection through lab delivery.
4. "Will you provide a detailed report I can use for multiple remediation bids?" — If they hesitate, they don't want you shopping their findings.
5. "Do you follow IICRC S520 separation guidelines?" — Their answer tells you whether they follow their own industry's standards.

How they answer — not just what they say, but how comfortable they are with the questions — tells you everything about how to evaluate their findings.