The question asked in this paper focuses upon one particular aspect of the role of an interpreter, seeking to explore the perspective upon it highlighted in the professional’s ethical guidelines and practitioners’ interpretations of those guidelines in situated communication events. The authors’ starting point was a sense that in some ethically complex contexts, either the strictures of the Code itself or interpreter’s readings of its prescriptions were often at odds with actual practice. The aim, then, was to begin to look a little more carefully, from the interpreter’s point of view, at some problem's circumstances and thus to get a handle on some apparent discrepancies between the profession’s encoding regulatory principles and their practical realisation. The authors therefore set out briefly some of the underpinning knowledge of their own approach to the issue. Secondly, they sketch the context in which their study was undertaken and thirdly, they present the ‘dilemma’ scenarios highlighted and exemplify interpreters' responses to them.