The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) has been awarded a grant to Universities Scotland to develop a race audit tool to assist teaching staff in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to meet their positive duties under the UK Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000). The first part of this development will involve the researcher in accessing the perspectives of black and ethnic minority higher education students across Scotland concerning the existing delivery of teaching and assessment in HEIs. Bird (1996) found that the tutor perspective in HEIs which views the curriculum (viewed predominantly as course content and knowledge) as not being a problem, may contrast markedly with the perspective of black students themselves, who frequently draw attention to gaps in the curriculum.This paper will discuss the existing literature in the field, the methodology and the ethical issues to be considered when a white HEI lecturer is the researcher attempting to investigate the perspectives of black students. Questions of establishing trust and negotiating identities will be at the heart of the methodology employed. There is a danger in attempting to 'multiculturalise' the HEI curriculum which has been identified by Hage (1994) and De Vreede (2000), following Bourdieu, that the resulting 'tolerance' being aimed for by such a strategy, is actually used by the powerful to condescend to the less powerful. It will be vital therefore to go beyond the immediately voiced perspectives and experiences of those being researched and attempt to collaboratively interpret the culture of the HEIs with the respondents. It is questionable to what extent this can happen in a project funded for a short time-scale, which in itself has implications for how ethnographic method can be used to influence policy.