Ethicists are often included as part of interdisciplinary research projects when the research is deemed ethically controversial, e.g. in research aimed at developing biotechnologies to be applied in food production. The stated or implied expectations are often that ethicists can deliver a stamp of moral approval or advice on how to avoid moral disapproval. We argue that these expectations ask too much of applied ethics. A normative judgment requires a combination of ethical analysis and a normative perspective, but it is not possible for the ethicist to decide whether one normative starting point is objectively better than another. In light of this, some ethicists have turned to empirical ethics to find a normativity that is independent of the ethicist’s particular biases. In this paper we assess the dialogical empirical ethics methodology developed by Widdershoven et al. as an example of an approach that claims to develop an emerging normativity through interaction with the stakeholders in the process. However, we find that this approach inevitably introduces ethicist-dependent normativity that cannot be relied upon as the sort of objective answer that is sought by those posing the question. The focus on generating normativity undermines the methodology when it is not successful, and in fact does not represent the most important contribution of such methods when they are successful. When methods are directed away from their attempt to ‘generate’ normativity, and instead onto their ability to ‘translate’ normativity into a given context, they represent a valuable tool in providing the type of guidance that is increasingly asked of ethicists. Understanding and pursuing this alternative aim does not diminish the importance of including ethicists in controversial research projects, but it changes their role: Instead of providing normative judgment, they should be used to make the values that are relevant to the research project transparent, determine how those values and commitments could be expressed in the given context, and facilitate dialogues between stakeholders.