Ethics

The Lens of Ethics

Although research indicates that most evaluators report that they have faced ethical conflicts in their careers, a significant minority of evaluators maintains that they have not. In part, this latter finding appears to be due to differences among evaluators in how they categorize similar or identical events. What one evaluator may view as an ethical challenge, another may see as “simply” a political, philosophical, or methodological dispute. For example, Evaluator A might believe that an evaluator who fails to thoroughly involve stakeholders in designing and monitoring an evaluation is behaving unethically. Evaluator B might regard this neglect of stakeholder involvement as methodologically or philosophically regrettable, but not as morally blameworthy. Thus Evaluator A perceives the situation through an ethical lens, but Evaluator B does not.

The factors responsible for these differences in perspective are not well understood. There is research evidence suggesting that internal evaluators are less likely than external evaluators to see problems through an ethical lens. This may be due to role pressures that internal evaluators experience as members of the setting they are evaluating, pressures that can lead to co-optation and decreased ethical sensitivity. In this context, it is important to note that viewing a situation in ethical terms typically raises issues of personal responsibility and accountability for the perceiver. The perceiver often feels compelled to take action of some sort, an action that may put him or her at professional or personal risk. Thus, in many circumstances, the perceiver may have much to gain from not viewing a problem through an ethical lens. This is a fertile area for future research.

The Nature of Ethical Challenges

Ethical conflicts can arise during any stage of an evaluation: entry or contracting, design of the study, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, communication of findings, and utilization of findings. According to evaluators' self-reports, ethical difficulties are most likely to arise in the entry or contracting stage and toward the end of the evaluation (i.e., communication and utilization of results). The following challenges are the ones most frequently described for the entry or contracting stage:

• A stakeholder has already decided what the evaluation findings “should be” or plans to use the findings in an ethically questionable fashion.
• A stakeholder declares certain research questions off limits in the evaluation, despite their substantive relevance.
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• Legitimate stakeholders are omitted from the planning process.
• Various stakeholders have conflicting expectations, purposes, or desires for the evaluation.
• The evaluator has difficulty identifying key stakeholders.

From the evaluator's vantage point, this list depicts a truism that is all too familiar to practitioners: An effective working relationship with an appropriate set of stakeholders who operate in good faith regarding the evaluation is much easier to seek than to achieve. However, failing to achieve it is seen by many evaluators as ethically problematic.

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