• Did the graduate student adequately justify two ethically viable responses to the dilemma? If not, what is missing?
• Select the solution you feel is the best response (it can be one of the proposed solutions or you can come up with your own)

I am writing you today in an effort to provide exposition around an opportunity I have to explore racist hiring practices within an organization. Additionally, I am seeking your insight and support regarding a challenge in this research.

As for the research itself, I propose to observe, as a non-participant, a series of ten interviews for an organization seeking to hire two managerial positions; collecting and analyzing a mix of qualitative and quantitative data on behavior, social awareness and decision-making in order to analyze and report results. Ordinarily, this idea would be a relatively straight-forward scenario, seeing the organization as the subject, clarifying my purpose there, and providing feedback to them based on observed behavior and best practices for hiring. However, in this scenario, with observed racism as the focus of inquiry, I propose that a straightforward approach to clarifying my intent would be damaging to the observed data, with the potential for behaviors to temporarily skew and for true and helpful data to become out of reach. I would like to propose two possible solutions to this challenge.

Proposal #1: In order to remain a non-participant in the interview room but also gain informed consent afterwards, I would like to state my reason for being there as "an intern learning about job interviews" rather than as "a researcher exploring racist hiring practices." Doing this would allow the environment to remain emotionally neutral and for natural behaviors to persist. After all ten interview observations are complete, I would then debrief all participants following the complete collection of data, let them know the true nature of my presence, and give them opportunity to withdraw their data or consent. I recognize this is deception (American Psychological Association [APA], 2017, 8.07) and runs the risk of bringing integrity into question for both myself and the organization (APA, 2017, Principle C). However, I believe this approach is the best chance at getting true and helpful data while also remaining honest with the workforce, thereby contributing to our overall body of knowledge around racism in the universal workplace while creating a dialogue around race within the organization

Proposal #2: In order to remain a non-participant in the interview room and remove all possible data barriers throughout the research, I would like to state my reason for being there as the same in Proposal #1 and then collect data just like Proposal #1. However, in this proposal I would not debrief all participants about the true nature of my presence but rather present the organization with overall observed data, making certain to remove any connection to an individual employee. This approach would protect privacy, confidentiality, and continued employment. As this data collection is within the normal operations of the organization and does not threaten an employment, I propose dispensing with informed consent (APA, 2017, 8.05). I recognize that running this study like this brings a subject's confidentiality, privacy, and self-determination into serious question and would require defined steps to those protections (APA, 2017, Principle E). However, taking this approach would have a minimal impact on the organization's existing rhythms and behaviors and would allow more understanding of possible racist hiring practices without exposing individual racism or damaging the employee culture overall.