Internal evaluator

From EvaluationWiki

In program evaluation, one who is in the employ of the program being evaluated. Of course, this produces a conflict of interest in most organizations, since the supervisors of the evaluator are likely to want good results rather than good evaluations, so there is a pressure towards a positive bias in the evaluations. Good organizations reward quality evaluations rather than good ones, from their internal evaluators since the bad conclusions point the way towards avoiding disasters that will cost much more than the benefits from a false report of good results. The internal evaluator, who is likely to know more about the evaluand than any external evaluator, and who is in a position that can provide a strong push towards taking appropriate action in responding to evaluation findings, has these two advantages to offset the problem of bias (which comes not just from supervisor pressure but from lack of perspective due to lack of distance from the evaluand), and can therefore be extremely useful, especially if encouraged to call what they see, not what their boss would like to see.