[jakobe]

No one said love was without risks!

Joking aside, I think you are misunderstanding me.

I don't suggest anybody should be fired for asking someone for a date. I'm saying that company policy can give you an easy way to say "no" to a date: "Sorry, I don't want to jeopardize my career, you know company policy.". Ideally, the person asking you out will accept your rejection, and there's no need to fire anyone.

[thaumasiotes]

That excuse becomes unusable quickly as the number of office couples grows. A policy on the books won't let you off the hook when everyone knows it's not an actual policy.

[mithaler]

Not just "ideally"; I would go so far as to say that the situation where the rejected person does not gracefully accept it is the point at which anyone in that situation has first done something "bad". (We have a term for further retribution against the rejector in a professional context: "sexual harassment". In an ordinary personal context, we would simply say it makes the person an asshole.)