Principles, promises, and a personal plea: What Is an evaluator to do?

The client of a student evaluation team has requested that the evaluators provide confidential identifying information gathered in the course of the evaluation. Here, the authors consider their response to the client's request. Specifically, they draw from professional principles developed to guide ethical decision making for evaluators and educators to consider the advantages and disadvantages of denying or meeting this request from a variety of stakeholder perspectives. The authors then use this stakeholder analysis to engage in imaginative thinking about the possible responses from which the student evaluation team can select. They conclude with a review of lessons learned from this challenging situation.