The paper relates the objectives and preliminary results from a project on Finnish/Swedish community interpreting in Sweden, the so called FIKON-project at the Department of Finnish, Stockholm University (Swed. Finsk-svensk kontakttolkning i Sverige). A point of departure for the investigation are the ethical recommendations to interpreters formulated by the Swedish National Board of Trade, according to which the interpreter has to act neutrally and objectively. The data, deriving from 32 tape recordings in four different communicative settings (social insurance office, doctor/patient-conversation, consultation of diabetes nurse and courtroom proceedings), show a considerable deviation in the acting of the interpreters relative to the recommendations. A theoretical framework for the analysis of the data is the skopos theory.