News and Insights

When personal missteps become corporate crises

July 24, 2025

Crisis comms in the grey area of executive conduct

In a time marked by near-unprecedented division, last week saw Coldplay’s kiss-cam briefly unite the internet. It is perhaps Chris Martin’s greatest accomplishment yet. Inadvertently, it also triggered an entirely unforeseen crisis for a previously under-the-radar tech company.

At this late stage, the story needs little explaining. A married tech CEO and his also-married Chief People Officer (CPO) were caught in a conspicuously cosy embrace on a stadium big screen. Their startled body language and hasty retreat soon prompted the internet’s vast sleuthing community to mobilise, identify the two guilty parties, and unearth every orifice of their personal and professional lives. Cue mass internet giddiness. Within hours, the data analytics company Astronomer had gone from a niche SaaS enterprise to a viral household name and internet punchline.

On Saturday – three days after the story first broke – the company confirmed that CEO Andy Byron had resigned. It was the third statement issued by the company in less than 72 hours.

The grey area of executive misconduct

Most large corporations will have comprehensive crisis management plans neatly stored away for all manner of eventualities. These crisis frameworks will scenario plan for everything from cyber-attacks to product recalls, health and safety breaches, corporate governance issues, and everything in between. Humans are fallible, and therefore, executive misconduct is typically high on the risk register. However, what qualifies as executive misconduct – particularly against a highly politicised backdrop of culture wars and seemingly performative ’masculine’ leadership – isn’t always straightforward.

Without knowing the intimate details of either relationship, extra-marital workplace affairs cause real pain and fallout for the families involved. However, they’re certainly not illegal – nor do they by default constitute a business failure, the unravelling of a corporation’s professional integrity, or critically, the haemorrhaging of customers. This prompts a broader and more fundamental question: when is it appropriate for a company and its CEO to part ways?

Is having an affair a sackable offence — or only if it plays out in public view? In the subjective world of personal and professional ethics, which missteps are forgivable, and which are not? Does it come down to a loss of internal trust or investor confidence? What qualifies as lasting reputational damage versus a fleeting PR storm? Does it depend on company culture and values, or on how indispensable or not the executive is to the company’s future success? Or is it as simple as – even if no laws were broken – the background noise growing too large to ignore?

While fast-twitch social media muscles rarely pause for nuance, those sitting around the boardroom table must. These questions matter — not just in the moment, but because the rationale, or perceived rationale, will shape internal culture, external trust and future precedent long after the headlines fade.

Upholding company values and accountability

To its credit, Astronomer has got a lot right in recent days. Its crisis comms strategy was underpinned by speed, decisiveness, proportionality and an unwavering focus on its customers.

On Saturday morning, the company confirmed: “…Andy Byron has been placed on leave.” Within hours, a follow-up statement was issued: “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met. Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted.”

While the world watched on with rapt fascination, Astronomer never lost sight of its core audience – its customers. As the company stated: “While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not.” Interim CEO Pete DeJoy mirrored this sentiment in a LinkedIn post published on Monday, citing its customers five times across his short, measured post seeking to draw a line behind this peculiar chapter in the company’s history.

And yet despite its swift action, Astronomer still had to grapple with widespread misinformation and an unrelenting deluge of public scrutiny and mockery. This was epitomised by a fraudulent but highly believable statement purporting to be from Andy Byron, which rapidly outpaced the company’s attempts to debunk it, only further fuelling the giddy drama.

Heavy lies the crown of leadership

As a direct consequence of the indiscretions of its CEO, Astronomer found itself catapulted from niche DataOps platform to backdrop for an unlikely soap opera in a matter of hours. Crucially, it is unlikely to lose any clients on the back of the incident and may even see a lead generation bounce on the back of its enhanced brand visibility. So why part ways?

Ultimately, the episode underscores the unforgiving truth about leadership roles. CEOs are not just employees. They are the face of the business, and that comes with enhanced responsibilities. It is the role of the CEO to lead. When their ability to lead and sell is undermined by the need to avoid embarrassing questions, skip public engagements, or dodge colleagues in the corridor, their credibility erodes. Their capacity to set, sell, and embody the company’s mission becomes fundamentally compromised. In such instances, those in the decision-making seats must act. This shouldn’t be viewed in the binary terms of moral purity. Instead, it is about preserving the corporation’s clarity of purpose and proactively wrestling back control of the narrative.

As Interim CEO Pete DeJoy wrote on LinkedIn: “We’re here because the mission is bigger than any one moment.” In this instance, Byron’s personal misstep had become bigger than the business itself. The Board rightly grasped the nettle. Heavy lies the crown — and then it’s gone.

Learn more about FINN Partners’ PR and crisis communications expertise or contact us for more information.

Paddy O’Dea is a senior partner at communications firm FINN Partners.

A version of this article first appeared in the Business Post on 24 July 2024.