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"Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right". Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

This paper explores the role of formal ethics review processes in evaluation and proposes the development of an alternative model more suited to the primary purposes of evaluation of improvement and accountability.

Scarred by recent experiences with navigating ethics approvals processes for a number of evaluations two evaluators sat down to learn from the experience. We identified the effects of the ethics process on the evaluations and the benefits and disbenefits that ensued. We then compared this list to the objectives that the ethical process was intended to achieve. We discovered a number of unintended negative effects that the ethics process had on individual evaluations that has significance for the broader evaluation practice.

This bureaucratic maze was set up ostensibly to protect the 'vulnerable' from harm; however we identified examples where it had prevented voices from being heard and formalised methodology to preventing iterative learning. We posited that it also could deter people from carrying out an evaluation or from evaluating aspects of a program where the participants are deemed more vulnerable or where there was a limited budget. We contemplated the fact that evaluations were required to undergo a process of review more stringent than that of the program being evaluated.

We found that the formal ethics review process does not fit the majority of evaluations undertaken for program improvement and accountability. We suggest that the AES needs to develop an ethics framework that is more in keeping with the discipline of evaluation before it is swallowed up by the research ethics processes. We propose some of the factors that might be incorporated in such a framework.