Is There a Culture in Design Research to Gather Informed Consent?

I don't think we have the culture in design or design research to gather informed consent consent. Most of time this is for us in design research it's been a legal paper that we need to get people to sign. It's all about covering the organizations backside and not really about caring if someone really does consent in an informed way. If no one ever says no then I mean 100% of anything is normally a bit suspicious.