The author comments on Meredith Minkler's article, "Ethical Challenges for the "Outside" Researcher in Community-Based Participatory Research," Health Education & Behavior 31(6):684-697, 2004 [see EJ824234]. Specifically, this commentary notes along with Minkler that, in relation to the relatively uncharted territory of Community-Based Participatory Research, we are caught off guard when ethical issues arise within our zones of smug philosophical comfort and smug self-righteousness. This approach to research seemed to fit so comfortably into the philosophical commitments of health education to participatory approaches in community work, into our educational and behavioral science assumptions about participation in the learning process, into our social commitments to shared decision making and learning that we hardly anticipated an assault from ethical quarters. Resistance was not unexpected from those who doubted the methodological rigor of such research or questioned the objectivity of scientists who abandoned the arm's-length posture of positivist science or the unblinding of "subjects" of research in making them co-researchers. But ethical questions were the last we might have expected to face. The author of the present article addresses three ethical challenges in terms of: (1) definitional issues: (2) shared responsibility and governance; and (3) cultural humility versus technical humility.