True.

It boils down to how much they could keep their relationship professional at work even whilst romantically involved outside, and them keeping it hidden, whilst understandable, doesn’t exactly indicate to the board that they were professional about it (people who are impeccably professional about it immediatelly realised the potential conflict of interest and would have tried to address that risk and the impression around it, even if trying to keep it discrete).

Having come clean about it at least to some board members might have helped once the news came out because said people would have mentioned to the rest when the news blew up that they had been kept appraised of the situation, which might have helped. On the other hand it might’ve just guaranteed termination when they did come clean.

I had in my own professional career a situation which had the potential to explode (legal trouble, small but none the less some) and informed and kept my direct superior appraised of it, and when it did blow up and ended up in the newspapers (purelly by chance there was a freelance reporter there and the whole thing was “juicy” and a bit sleazy and made everyone involved look bad - great for gossip kind of news - so I guess that freelance reporter managed to sell the article to a couple of newspapers - good for her as she looked like she needed the money) I still got kicked out of my contract (I was a freelancer) because it made the company look bad. I was literally told that had the thing not ended up in the newspapers it would’ve been fine.