Decisions about research funding present salient ethical issues that each doctoral candidate must work through. Many doctoral candidates feel that benefiting from organizations they may consider immoral constitutes an ethical breach. For example, in the past, many doctoral candidates refused to accept funding from companies that supported apartheid in South Africa. Some students may refuse funding from organizations suspected of human rights abuses.
Doctoral students in the health and social sciences fields often research human subjects. This research may involve changing their subjects' internal or external environments, and doctoral students must anticipate the possibility of adverse effects on their subjects. Some students might conduct research on human subjects secretly only to disclose their undercover status later. Kevin Roose, a student at Brown University and author of "The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University," conducted ethnographic research at Liberty University under the pretense of being an evangelical transfer student. Throughout his semester, Roose struggled with the ethics of forming friendships and while using a false identity.
In an October 2006 study published in "Counseling and Values," Janna L. Scarborough and colleagues found that doctoral candidates struggle with the ethics of teaching individuals with whom they had been classmates, friends and sometimes even lovers. Doctoral candidates who are teaching master's level students are responsible for student evaluations which presents an ethical dilemma when doctoral students must determine whether loyalty to a friend outweighs the obligation to deliver an unbiased evaluation. Doctoral candidates must decide between the competing obligations of friendship and professionalism.
The relationship between doctoral students and professors can be complex. Students and professors vacillate between a hierarchical student-teacher relationship and a more relaxed scholar-to-scholar relationship. This ambiguity can be ethically confusing. Doctoral students need to choose the appropriate degree of formality and distance in each of their student-professor relationships. Professors who become friendly with doctoral students may share negative information about colleagues or other doctoral candidates. They may make inappropriate romantic gestures. These professors might exercise power over the student as a member of his dissertation review board or a department chairperson. In these cases, doctoral students have to decide whether to report the professor to the appropriate authorities or solve these problems directly with the professor.