I'm a consultant but I can't seem to wrap my head around why they want me to look into a private blockchain and had me speak to some organization for cryptocurrencies for help. I hit a brick wall here. Isn't private blockchains supposed to be a NO for companies? Any help is appreciated.
I think it depends on the use case. The secret ballot exists for entirely ethical reasons. The Monero blockchain is more specifically hiding provenance (or trails from initial provenance). In your case it would mostly remove reputation for analysis of stakeholders between votes. I'm not entirely sure why this would be relevant for ethical considerations.
private blockchain doesn't have to hold by one company, it can be multiple companies, they can set different party for doing the PoW or other algorithms.
Private blockchains lack decentralized consensus, so the have more in common with a typical database than they do w public blockchains.
Given that they are normally used inside a single company or between a few companies who already trust each other, i don’t see any ethical problems.