The Ethics of Anonymising a Source
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Granting anonymity protects a subject who might otherwise face real consequences for speaking honestly, but it also removes a layer of accountability a reader would normally use to judge the reliability of an account, which is exactly why the decision deserves genuine care rather than routine, automatic granting.
Good practice sets clear terms before the interview even begins: what level of detail will be withheld, whether a general description will still be used in its place, and under what circumstances, if any, the arrangement might later change with the subject's own agreement, once circumstances shift in ways neither party could have predicted at the outset.
Even when a name is deliberately withheld, everything else about the claim still needs the same careful verification any other source would require, since anonymity protects identity alone, not the underlying obligation to be genuinely accurate, which applies whether or not a name is attached to the claim.