This chapter is written in response to ‘The Quest for Generic Ethics Principles in Social Science Research’ by David Carpenter. It is also based on a response given at a workshop organised by the Academy of Social Sciences in March 2013 to help to formulate some generic ethics principles for social sciences. From an anthropologist’s perspective I argue that there is no way that ethics principles or procedures can ‘solve’ all dilemmas of conducting ethically sound research and that we need to acknowledge the difficulties and talk about them, and to build this into a reflexive research process, rather than try to protect ourselves from them through bureaucratic procedures.