This paper uses the concept of 'ethicality' to analyse focus-group conversations in New Zealand on biobanking and genetic testing. 'Ethicality' has been used by Arohia Durie, a Maori educationist, to highlight how ethical talk and practice is historically and socially positioned, situated within specific life-worlds, embedded within always partial communities, and articulated within individual life narratives. This situated ethicality is identified in the talk of Maori and non-Maori research participants. The authors (a moral philosopher, two sociologists and a kaupapa Maori social researcher) argue that serious consideration of ethicality presents significant challenges to the abstracted character of much expert ethical analysis, while also illustrating connections between 'ethics talk' and expert discourses.