I'm not sure if this impossible position is given: he fucked up. He was C-level executive, his partner got hired, but he did not tell a word to HR (or company) about their relationship. Now, you have impossible position.
If the company and HR knew about their relationship then his position might not be so impossible.
Sometimes it feels like even talking about a relationship to other people can effect the state of that relationship. It's easy in hindsight to say, hey, you shouldn't have done it this way. But maybe at certain points it looked like it was about to dissolve itself, but didn't... who knows. I can see a few reasons why I wouldn't want to say anything, especially if this person wasn't a direct report.
(This is taking the story at face value – who knows the truth and if there was a more nefarious reason behind the withholding of that information.)
It's a spectrum. Consider two extremes:
Smart and clean: Don't form relationships at the office, period.
Dumb and messy: As CEO, have sex with the office manager of your small startup.
This sounds like something very much in the gray area in between.
> I can see a few reasons why I wouldn't want to say anything, especially if this person wasn't a direct report.
Really?
The guy was the COO, almost by definition everyone else in the company reports to him through some direct line.
The guy admitted to having a physical relationship. There is absolutely no gray area here as far as HR would be concerned.
Your a C level exec, you have a physical relationship with someone else at the company, whether or not it stopped before that person arrived, you report it the first moment you know that person starts working at your company.
I agree relationships are messy and life has lots of gray areas. This, however, is not one of them. This is HR 101 and if your still not convinced he admitted he knew this and should have reported it.
Wouldn't want to say anything isn't the same as wouldn't say anything. We do things all the time where we know it's the wrong call, but we want to do it a certain way anyway.
I doubt there's anyone who believes he should have said something more than he. I just get the mindset that clouded things.
I know I should have gone to the gym this week. I didn't. You can probably understand the thinking, moods and circumstances that made that true, but we'd still agree I made the wrong call. That's all I'm saying.
The proper HR response is to remove the higher ranking officer from an "evaluatory role" and put someone else in charge of determining future promotions, demotions, bonuses, team role, etc.
Let's imagine a horribly messy situation. A professor and a graduate student that works in her lab want to become intimate. That's perfectly fine, so long as the professor gives up the ability to determine if they can graduate, dictate what classes they take, dictate pay, etc. Even cleaner because there is a record that the professor is to not be asked to evaluate performance in the future, so there's less likelihood that the other professor could be influenced.
You at some point do have to assume that people are trying to do things correctly, of course. But the more people there are who are aware of the situation the less likely it is that a conspiracy to cover up abuse of power will occur.
If the company and HR knew about their relationship then his position might not be so impossible.