Would SPI work in a system that may have EMI, distance =~ 60 cm
The data speeds are very low so 60-70 cms is not much problem but SPI is generally used for on board communication.
We had faced the same issue for 3V signals @ 2Mbps for 85cms off board communication, the solution to this was on the cost of a couple of GPIO pins for conversion of SPI signals to differential pair signals (RS485) using LTC2850, same at receivers end.