"Reliability is the absence of surprises, not the absence of change.
Standards protect teams from the most common lie: “just this once.” In an audit-driven requirement that can become theater, the purpose is not to be strict; it is to stay consistent under stress.
In an audit-driven requirement that can become theater, people comply with what is enforced, not what is written. If exceptions are informal, you end up with a standard no one can defend and a process no one trusts. Make the boundary explicit enough that a peer could disagree with it; if no one can disagree, no one can defend it under pressure.
Gene Kranz is useful here because it forces precision. Write the bar as a yes/no check, then name the exception trigger and decision owner. Make the exception rare so the standard stays real.