In computing education, group projects are often seen as an opportunity for students to gain experiences similar to what they will face in the workplace. As such, it is a pressing area for ethics education: practice incorporating ethics into project-based courses might provide encouragement and scaffolding for students to consider ethics when working on “real” technologies. In this work, we provide a preliminary look at the state of ethics education in project-based computing courses via semi-structured focus groups. These focus groups revealed that while not completely ignored, ethics had a very small role in our participants’ group projects, especially in software engineering courses. Furthermore, participants generally agreed that while group projects can be useful learning opportunities, they are not realistic, and this impacts their willingness to consider ethical implications while working on projects. We compiled participant feedback and ideas on how to improve ethics education in computing group projects, and present a synthesis on how this feedback can be implemented in the classroom. We also emphasize that part of simulating “real” tech work should include acknowledgment of larger structural problem and ideally training and practice in communication and argumentation.