When we were interviewing CEOs for my company, one of the things that surprised me was the interesting set of backgrounds we encountered. One, for example, had

When we were interviewing CEOs for my company, one of the things that surprised me was the interesting set of backgrounds we encountered. One, for example, had previously pled guilty to a federal indictment. We didn't hire him, and he went on to be CEO of another startup. I think the CEO career risk, excepting gratuitously bad behavior at the wrong time (see Mark Hurd), is actually quite low and very, very overstated.