Karma against Cheaters: Career

In 2023, Singaporean politicians from the ruling party as well as the main opposition party were found to be cheating on their spouses with their colleagues. That led to the resignation of all four politicians. In 2024, a primary school vice-principal resigned following his wife posting about the alleged affair on social media. This sparked the question: Should infidelity have repercussions on professional careers?

Private infidelity should definitely be professionally relevant when it creates a concrete risk of compromised judgement, blackmail, or unfair treatment of people under one’s authority. Furthermore, I would opine that it is wise for organisations to consider personal infidelity in their evaluations even in the lack of a direct link, due to the demonstrated lack of integrity and risk of compromise.

Demonstration of a lack of integrity

Sure, infidelity isn’t an illegal act. However, having an executive who has been proven to commit such perfidy where it is legal does not give much confidence to shareholders with little oversight. There are many ways a person can enrich themselves from company resources.

One large scale study suggests this is not just moral hand wringing. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University matched more than eleven thousand police officers, financial advisers, white collar criminals and senior executives against leaked Ashley Madison infidelity data, and found that users of the site were more than twice as likely to engage in professional or corporate misconduct, even after controlling for age, gender and other factors. In other words, cheating in one’s personal life is statistically associated with cheating in one’s professional life, which strengthens the case that an exposed affair is a red flag for anyone trusted with power and money.

Furthermore, there often is an overlap with a conflict of interest. The Vice Principal, Vincent Tan, had an affair with the parent of a student. This calls into question any opportunities the student had enjoyed: Was the treatment of this student influenced in any way by the fact that an authority figure was exchanging lewd texts with their mother?

For public office, there’s the added dimension of being a role model and representative of social norms. By allowing an adulterer to hold positions of high-esteem, it sets the culture for the organisation as a whole.

Potential blackmail risk

There is also the leverage that an affair holds over both the cheater and their affair partner. Rivals of the organisation that employs them can leverage such knowledge to compromise the organisation.

A captain of one of the United Kingdom’s nuclear submarines stepped back from his role after he was investigated over flirtatious messages sent to a Labour MP, though he remains in the Navy.

Pitfall: Loss of income

However, the career setbacks further hurt those that have been cheated on, since the income stream is affected and has a cascading effect on maintenance and child support. For the homemakers who are cheated on, it can be adding an insult to the injury of infidelity. It could also adversely affect the lives of the children. That is one reason that many refrain from exposing their spouse’s infidelity to the workplace, even if the adultery occurred between co-workers.

As an employer though, I doubt it makes sense to risk your organisation’s performance to protect the spouse of an employee who went wayward.

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Infidelity should not automatically end a person’s career, but once it creates real risks around conflicts of interest, security, or fairness to people under their authority, it becomes a legitimate professional concern. When there is evidence that private cheating correlates with professional misconduct, and when public trust or organisational reputation is at stake, employers and parties are justified in treating such behaviour as a serious integrity issue that can affect whether someone is fit to lead. At the same time, even cheating in private life should be regarded as an amber warning about the moral fibre of the cheater.