Honestly I don’t think there is a grey area on when to shut down or continue a project with an assessed risk. I think that when a risk analysis is done and the results are shown to the company/stakeholders/sponsors, they will be the deciding factor on whether the project will be a go or a no-go, if the risk:reward is positive or not. I don’t think there will be a point when a team leader having a personal connection will affect if a project gets to continue or not, if the risk is of a severity that does not have a foreseeable benefit to the company/stakeholders/sponsors to justify the risk then it is likely to not be given a green light in the first place. Now if this personal connection leads to a team leader fudging the risk analysis data, then I think there will be some severe consequences. There are ways to change the risk associated with a project such as avoidance, mitigation, acceptance, and transference. These ways of dealing with risk should be looked into, but the basic rule of thumb would boil down to risk vs. reward.