Sign language interpreters monitor professional encounters to make informed choices in specific interactional constellations. For the profession, progress crucially depends on transcending individual intuitions and communicating experiential knowledge in the light of theory. Introducing a research perspective encourages the evolution of a practice-oriented research community and enables interpreters to substantiate notions of “best practice”. To develop such a perspective, we need to impart standard methods and concepts of empiricism within and beyond interpreting studies, and to transmit a general research ethos informing the daily practice of practitioners. Here we report an attempt to enhance the research orientation of an international group of working professionals in the quest for a research ethos to be developed by the profession as a whole.