"Judgment erodes when leaders confuse transparency with disclosure.
A standard is not a moral statement. In a request to bypass a guardrail “just this once”, it is an agreement about what the system will do under pressure. Without that agreement, you get exceptions by persuasion instead of principle.
In a request to bypass a guardrail “just this once”, the exception will sound reasonable and urgent. If the exception path is fuzzy, enforcement becomes personal and the standard becomes optional. That is how dissent turns into resentment. Make the boundary explicit enough that a peer could disagree with it; if no one can disagree, no one can defend it under pressure.
Chris Argyris is useful here because it forces precision. Re-state the standard as a yes/no check and make the exception path explicit and narrow. Do not add ceremony; add precision.