It is hard to understand what you fully mean by your question Ryan. To fully grasp the concept of your question I would like to know what you mean by personal connection? The most severe case I could imagine would perhaps be a project leader who needs to move forward on a project that they believe would help a family member. In a less extreme case, a project they have been researching for years, but is very risky to create. However, in either case I believe it would be determined how Anthony had said it, risk vs. reward. At the end of the day a project requires funds in order to operate. Without funds there are no source of materials, and likely no people to work on the project. If a project is determined to have too high of a risk factor than it is probable the project will get cut, or thrown back onto the drawing board. Personal connection or not, if a project is found to have too high a risk it will not proceed. If the project leader wants to continue work on the project, they will most likely have to do so at their own expense, and on their own property.