Seriously, I don't get how this is hard for folks. It's unbelievably simple. Be aware that you may have professional power over other people, and if you do, make an active effort not to flirt with them. Have the self-restraint not to mix an investment/supervisory relationship with romance or sex. Either it will feel coercive, or it's a conflict of interest waiting to happen.
Avoiding trying to sleep with your subordinates is not rocket surgery.
If someone else had applied for the position as your father's secretary and had been refused, they could have complained about it by pointing to the conflict of interest.
If you want to avoid the negative consequences of mixing work and romance, you'd better not only focus on the best-case result, but also keep the worst case in mind and accordingly tread carefully.
It's still incredibly inappropriate to ask someone out when you can fire her. How do you know she really wants to say yes?
The reality, in my eyes, would be something like this:
- People walk around looking more or less intelligently, but almost all have primal sexual urges that they are frequently seeking or at least thinking about to fulfill. That applies to women and men.
- Society is built in a way which only allows people to make subtle hints about this desire. It is unacceptable to display too much sexual desires in most contexts of public and professional life. There is an animal in everyone but it must not come out.
- The dynamics that play out during the process of finding a mate are complex, happen in parts unconsciously, and are the result of evolutionary biology and psychology. Meaning, everyone does things to attract a mate which he/she might not be "aware" of - and which sometimes appear extremely stupid in hindsight (Bill Clinton or Dave McClure anyone?!).
- There is a gender difference in the heterosexual mating process. Men impress women with power, status (often = money), display of dominance, achievements, and often make the first approach (sometimes after they think they saw a behavior from her side which correctly or wrongly suggested them that she might be interested). Women select the men who they go on a date with. This does not apply always, you can find different variations of this and also the occasional woman who takes pride in having been the one who did the approach. I also don't make a statement about whether this behavior is learned or innate, or both; but based on the current information I have I feel comfortable enough to generalize this dynamic. I suggest that one can even see this behavior in apps like Tinder where most women let a man write first after a match (sadly I don't have a scientific study about this - it is just personal observation, own experience, from talks with friends and observations of cultural norms) - therefore, I am curious about how Bumble will do on the market. If it becomes a big hit with the current concept to require women to write first after a match, what I wrote in the last sentences will prove to be wrong.
- If we want awareness and a change of behavior, everyone needs to learn to understand these dynamics, and needs to understand that regardless of gender, he/she also operating to some extend outside of the normal rational and reasonable thought procedure.