The encounter of child protection services (CPS) and racialized families is prone to tensions that remain largely unexplored. This article is based on a research carried with workers and managers of CPS. Results indicate that in order to face the tensions that emerge in the context of investigation, workers rely mostly on their personal agency, which is defined and modelled differently following the practitioners’ values, preferences and experience. Agency is also under tension from the institutional pressure for performance and the lack of support for daily practice. Ethical challenges associated with a narrow individual understanding of agency are discussed under the light of institutional accountability to promote better evaluation practices with racialized families.