It is confirmed, I am ethical!
Phew! That is a relief. My ethics application has just been approved. As a follow-up to my last blog, I am pleased to report this was approved first time of asking. Conditional upon my confirmation that all recording of interview will be stored directly to university systems – and not on my laptop. Yes, that is a must-do.
For me personally, this first-time approval is a big deal. My year 2 progress assessment is fast approaching, and this is important progress. I would have some explaining to do if I were moving into my final year still to be approved to conduct my method of interview. For any PhD candidate, this approval is a milestone to pass through. For any academic research this is now what must be done each and every time one moves an idea into a formal academic action.
As stated in the last blog, this approval is the result of months of challenge to my methodology by my supervisors. The pre-PhD me would be asking “why on earth does this all take so long?”. In other words, how can a PhD possibly need so long in the preparation before the real data collection even begins? Which for me is a data collection via interview. Maybe you are reading this, thinking that, too. After all, plenty of people conduct interviews, and against tight deadlines which demand one to just get on and do. Skills most learn in business or through life one way or another. Much like you then, this has been me too!
If I contrast this preparation with other forms of interview I am more familiar with, this has been quite different. For example, I have been a consultant interviewer – I have prepared, conducted and reported plenty of interviews to establish facts for executive decision-makers. That requires preparation more focused upon the needs of those engaging one to seek what they want you to find. I did similar work when compiling reports for purposes of due diligence. Different again is conducting one-to-one career development interviews, or performance appraisals, or performance improvement interventions, with colleagues. This one-to-one is different because they reported to me and I was working within frameworks of guidance imposed upon me, and therefore obligations of a different kind. The same may be said of interviewing job applicants, where one is ultimately intended to tell most the answer is no based upon a selection criteria. Or I could recall, with stoic resolve, occasions when my investigations into allegations of poor conduct resulted in dismal of those found to have been too wayward and too economical with the truth. In each case there was preparation, consideration of duties, and thereafter there was interview. All are life skills of communication and assessment perhaps, but each demanding preparation as well as establishing facts in interview. Many of those examples would not have been long in the preparing – prepared as I was for each.
However, the PhD version of me now appreciates just how exacting and powerful this more deliberate and precise academic preparation can be. It is different in kind. Even if I compare this to other transformations, such as learning to be a facilitator consultant and not an advisor in a room, or mentor, or directing others to what I needed them to do, this is different preparation again. This academic ethical process is different in kind, because it questions why do this at all. The questioning of everything, and most especially the safety of the other, and the integrity of what is then found and what is retained and what not. In this research capacity, this preparation is something different and useful to have learned. Both in interview context (a method) but also in methodological context much more broadly. In both senses applying best practice to the how and the why of what must be more precisely framed, and to know what we are academically adhering to.
My supervisors suggest I will now need quite some months conducting interview and analysing my interview data – of course I am naively thinking I can do it quicker than they think!!! Some lessons can only be learned the hard way I suppose. Learning by doing, no matter how well one prepares. More lessons to learn over the summer and beyond no doubt.
To be continued…