  Background: Despite a long history, numerous laws and regulations, ethics
remains an unnatural topic for many software engineering researchers. Poor
research ethics may lead to mistrust of research results, lost funding and
retraction of publications. A core principle for research ethics is
confidentiality, and anonymization is a standard approach to guarantee it. Many
guidelines for qualitative software engineering research, and for qualitative
research in general, exist, but these do not penetrate how and why to anonymize
interview data. Aims: In this paper we aim to identify ethical guidelines for
software engineering interview studies involving industrial practitioners.
Method: By learning from previous experiences and listening to the authority of
existing guidelines in the more mature field of medicine as well as in software
engineering, a comprehensive set of checklists for interview studies was
distilled. Results: The elements of an interview study were identified and
ethical considerations and recommendations for each step were produced, in
particular with respect to anonymization. Important ethical principles are:
consent, beneficence, confidentiality, scientific value, researcher skill,
justice, respect for law, and ethical reviews. Conclusions: The most important
contribution of this study is the set of checklists for ethical interview
studies. Future work is needed to refine these guidelines with respect to legal
aspects and ethical boards.
