Love in the Office Is Wonderful. Except for CEOs.

A few days ago we celebrated Valentine’s day, a good time to reflect that love springs everywhere, even at work. After all, love in the workplace is inevitable; but be forewarned. It does not always turn out well.

Is it surprising that when two people work at the same type of job, see a lot of each other, start to admire each other, then like each other, that they may well fall in love?

Love happens. But the real problems start when cupid aims his arrow at CEOs or other high-level executives who can’t be seen as playing favorites with particular employees. Over this decade, the string of firings of big corporate CEOs who had “inappropriate relationships” included the chief executives of McDonald’s, Priceline Group, Lockheed Martin, Best Buy, and countless others.

In truth, the terminations were not over relationships that were “inappropriate.” Rather, it’s that the affairs are usually undisclosed, although they are typically well known within the organization. Innocent bystanders become collateral damage.

The lack of disclosure corrodes institutional trust from within. Thus, when McDonald’s CEO was fired, an employee was quoted as saying that there had been dozens of other complaints about the company’s culture. “It’s clear McDonald’s culture is rotten from top to bottom,” she said.

Perhaps the height of lack of disclosure was reached by a nonprofit CEO in Massachusetts, who boasted of his transparency in a widely circulated blog, while conducting a close relationship with a woman employee, decades his junior, whom he met as a mentor to undergraduate students. She became a strategic planner at one of the organization’s branches , and eventually its chief of staff. Both jobs disappeared after her departure. Meanwhile, the CEO pled that the staff give up raises and benefits so the hospital would not be forced to lay off its lowest-paid workers. In response, the State’s Attorney General (AG), charged with overseeing charities, criticized board members and senior management—some of whom knew about the relationship for years and had warned the CEO about its inappropriateness—by noting that if they had taken definitive action when those concerns were first expressed, “much, if not all, of the damage would have been averted.” Key employees worried about the scarring effect on the organization’s reputation and fund-raising ability.

Advice for the lovelorn

So, if you non-CEOs are in love with a co-worker, good for you! The world needs much more love. But be transparent about it. Your work with the firm may well survive—nobody wants to lose valuable employees—although the two of you likely will not be able to continue to work on the same types of jobs. Love , especially in its early stages, sears the business judgment part of the brain. The loved one can do no wrong.

However, if you are a CEO in love with a colleague, the only place you should go is out the door. But, hey, count yourself lucky: you are in love after all. And by disclosing your romance early, you have spared many innocent people a great deal of heartache.