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The aim of this article is to draw attention to ethical challenges in qualitative research. Ethical challenges are associated less with qualitative – than with quantitative methods. Although it is «a statistically fact» that the most severe ethical issues and harmful damages in research history belongs to biomedical research intervention, it is still necessary to be aware of the potential of doing harm to respondents within qualitative research designs. This article challenges the predominant assumption that qualitative methods not are potentially harmful, and argue that so-called «emphatic and sensitive» research often referred to in qualitative studies has its special challenges and pitfalls. Intimacy and closeness are central aims in most qualitative interviews. In line with this, «daily conversation» is described as an ideal. However, the borders of what is regarded private in a conversation have changed tremendously, increasing the possibility that researcher and respondent might have quite different levels of self-disclosure. This increases the risk of violating respondents’ integrity. It also demonstrates how strategies of power and different philosophical assumptions about human beings might come to play in a context of qualitative interviews. This underscores the importance of critical reflection by researchers conducting qualitative interviews.

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